Waiting for no one: the emerging era of development sovereignty

by Ian Randall/

Waiting for no one: the emerging era of development sovereignty

Ian Randall
Ian Randall

Latest posts

Share:

Three conversations that changed how Ian Randall, and Wasafiri, think about the future of development in Africa

Last year, Overseas Development Assistance to Africa dropped faster than ever before, accelerating a long-term trend. This has triggered a period of creative destruction for anyone involved in African development.

The ODA era had us all oriented externally. What will drive progress now?

For organisations like Wasafiri, committed to making good change happen on the continent, how should we reorient ourselves?

I’ve been trying to listen for this emerging future. At every turn, I hear Africans claiming sovereignty over their development. Africa is waiting for no one.

Exhibit 1: A busy dump

Sam Mburu, in his twenties, is a pro boxer, long-distance runner, and founder of Dandora Green, a social enterprise that works with the waste-pickers at Dandora Dump – the largest waste dump in Kenya. At his invitation, I visited the site.

Five thousand people make their living sifting through Nairobi’s refuse to gather the plastics, metals, organic material, and paper for recycling. Dandora Green collates these pickings, negotiates contracts with buyers, and uses the proceeds to pay the waste-pickers, provide safety equipment, and ensure security.

New legislation is asking consumers to sort their waste at source, and requiring companies to pay for the cost of disposing of their products; generating public revenue that will pay a Ghanaian company to build a modern, efficient, safer sorting plant at Dandora dump.

While clearly progress, these measures will end the informal economy that provides for the waste-pickers. So, Sam is not waiting for anyone. He’s setting up a circular economy centre to retrain his community and create jobs from innovations that will upcycle the sorted waste into products like eco-bricks or t-shirts from recycled plastic.

These are exactly the kind of leaders Wasafiri wants to work with.

Rubbish dump
Sam Mburu pictured at the Dandora dumpsite in Nairobi

Exhibit 2: A birthday party

I joined our friends at the African Population and Health Research Center for their 25th Birthday Party. With hundreds of expert African researchers, they were joyfully celebrating everyone’s professional journey from research assistants to PhDs to cutting-edge studies that are unlocking a healthier future on the continent.

Wasafiri and APHRC colleagues discussed our next joint project, so I asked if partnering with a foreign institution might strengthen our pitch. But APHRC is waiting for no one.

We have partnered with APHRC on various fronts for years. They know the continent better than outsiders and can deliver high-quality research more affordably.

Exhibit 3: A wonky carrot

When Sylvia Kuria started her organic farm, she realised, “No one is coming to help me”. Her business would need to work on a purely commercial basis. Now she is Nairobi’s leading provider of organic food.

Through the African Food Fellowship, Sylvia connected with Wasafiri’s work embedding local farmers and traders in school feeding supply chains in Nairobi’s informal settlements and saw an opportunity. To scale, the meals would need to be affordable for families getting by on very low incomes.

Thankfully, Sylvia waits for no one. She and her fellow farmers have wonky carrots that they can’t sell elsewhere. Now these cut-price vegetables have a market, and Mukuru kwa Njenga’s pupils are studying on a full belly.

Sylvia and Ian at a recent Wasafiri Gathering
Sylvia and Ian at a recent Wasafiri Gathering

What this means for all of us

None of this is to minimise the damage. The collapse in ODA has real human costs, nowhere more painfully than for the people with HIV who depend on anti-retroviral drugs now caught in funding gaps.

But it also seems to have popped the collective delusion that positive change can come from agendas defined and resourced in Brussels, London and D.C.

In the emerging paradigm, Africans are claiming sovereignty over development. People once termed beneficiaries are now partners. Leadership is coming from those who inhabit the complexity of the issues and who will sustain change beyond funding cycles or fickle political agendas.

For Wasafiri, as a consultancy committed to Africa’s future, this new era is exciting. We are orienting ourselves to the leaders like Sam and Sylvia and institutions like APHRC, who are making good change happen.

The question is no longer whether Africa is ready. The question is whether the rest of us can keep up.

Let’s go!

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

From pilots to systems change in climate-smart agriculture

by Hannah Metcalfe/

From pilots to systems change in climate-smart agriculture

Hannah Metcalfe

Latest posts

Share:

Climate-smart practices and tech solutions are growing, yet scale remains limited. A regional analysis commissioned by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands-Nairobi and Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) explores why several of these rarely scale, and where the real challenge lies in the systems surrounding them.

Jointly authored by EKN/RVO and Wasafiri

Across East Africa, governments, development partners, and the private sector have invested significantly in climate-smart solutions; from drought-tolerant seed varieties and solar-powered irrigation to digital extension services and carbon finance pilots. Yet a familiar question persists: why, despite years of promising pilots and proven technologies, does meaningful scale remain so elusive?

Part of the challenge is that learning about what works rarely travels far enough. Successes are reported but often are not unpacked in ways that reveal why, where, or under what conditions they succeeded.

The answer, increasingly, is that climate-smart solutions are not a technology problem. It is a systems problem.

Transforming how millions of smallholder farmers manage land, water, and climate risk requires shifting the conditions that determine whether farmers can access tools, afford to adopt them, learn from each other, find profitable markets, and operate in a policy environment that rewards rather than penalises resilience.

To better understand how climate tech solutions are scaling across the region, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nairobi (EKN) commissioned a regional scoping exercise across East Africa.

The aim was to look across their project portfolio and identify the ways these practices are showing up to address climate change impacts, enhance resilience, and boost adaptation, and to ask what could be scaled or replicated.

The analysis examined programmes across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tanzania, spanning climate finance, value chain resilience, smallholder service delivery, digital agriculture, and regenerative practices. Rather than evaluating individual projects, it looked at how climate interventions interact with the wider system, and what conditions enable promising approaches to spread beyond pilot scale.

The findings showed how four systemic factors repeatedly determine whether climate-smart practices stay small or genuinely scale.

ChatGPT image showing the relationships of different bodies overlaying an African farming scene

1. Finance is the gateway to adoption

The most consistent barrier to farmer adoption of climate-smart practices is not a lack of knowledge about what works. It is the inability to bear the upfront cost of change.

Whether the practice in question is improved water harvesting, climate-resilient seed varieties, biodigesters, or sustainable soil management, smallholder farmers routinely understand the long-term benefit. What they cannot always absorb is the short-term risk. The investment required before the returns materialise, in farming seasons where one poor decision can mean real hardship.

Where blended models combine grants, credit, insurance, and income linkages in ways that reduce the cost of first adoption, uptake follows. The programmes demonstrating the greatest traction are those that treat finance not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental design element of climate-smart delivery. Sustainable finance ranked as one of the six core dimensions in assessing how scalable any given approach truly is.

2. Farmer networks are the engine of learning

Climate change is, by definition, a moving target. What works this season may need adjustment next season. The practices that succeed in one agroecological zone may need re-designing in another.

Farmers who are connected to lead farmer networks, producer organisations, peer learning groups, or digitally mediated knowledge exchanges are consistently better positioned to adapt, refine, and pass on what they learn.

The most effective knowledge systems are not top-down. They are peer-driven, locally embedded, and structured to allow learning to flow both ways.

Programmes that invest in building these networks, not just as a delivery mechanism for extension, but as a genuine learning infrastructure, show measurably better outcomes in long-term adoption and resilience.

When farmers trust each other’s experience, they are more willing to try new approaches. And when those networks are connected to digital tools that capture and share what is working, the learning compounds.

3. Private sector active role is what sustains change

Development programmes can finance adoption. They cannot, by themselves, sustain it. The programmes showing the most durable results are those that have managed to align private sector incentives with climate-smart outcomes, where the commercial logic and the climate logic point in the same direction.

This alignment takes different forms. In some cases, it is agribusinesses or off-takers willing to pay a premium for produce that meets environmental or sustainability standards, giving farmers a direct market signal that climate-smart practices pay.

In others, it is input suppliers and service providers who see a commercial opportunity in serving smallholder farmers better, and who build business models that make sustainable inputs more accessible and affordable.

In others, it is blended financing arrangements that make it commercially viable for the private sector to operate in markets that would otherwise be too risky.

The common thread is that when private sector actors have a genuine commercial stake in climate-smart outcomes, the resulting change has staying power that grant-funded programmes alone cannot provide.

4. Government alignment is what enables scale

Even the most well-financed and commercially viable climate-smart initiatives will struggle to reach national scale without enabling policy. But in many East African countries, including Kenya, the policy gap is not what it once was.

Kenya has comprehensive, well-drafted frameworks for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and food security. What consistently falls short is implementation and enforcement: translating national commitments into the subnational structures, resourcing, and political will needed to create effective change.

Programmes operating in environments where governments are actively aligned with climate-smart goals, often through supportive regulation, public investment, and political commitment, achieve far greater reach than those that are not.

One biodigester initiative in Uganda illustrated this directly: a significant part of its success was the active partnership between the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Agriculture, whose coordinated support helped increase the adoption and availability of biodigesters in the country.

Embedding climate-smart practices within public systems, rather than running parallel to them, is consistently what gives programmes the durability to outlast any individual donor cycle.

Scaling is not what happens after a programme ends. It is what happens when a system has been changed enough that it continues to move in the right direction without external push.

Looking back

The volume and variety of climate-relevant work identified in this analysis are notable. EKN, RVO, and the Food, Nutrition, and Security teams are clearly doing serious work in this space, and perhaps the most telling indicator is how consistently climate approaches are showing up in programmes that were never explicitly designed to address it.

These are projects built around increasing productivity, market access, or value chain development that have, in practice, become vehicles for climate adaptation and resilience because the teams implementing them recognise that climate change is one of the most significant barriers standing between farmers and food security.

But the scale of what is needed means that no single development partner, however committed and however well-positioned, can drive this transition alone.

The regional analysis points to a clear conclusion: the next generation of climate-smart solution programmes must be designed with systems change in mind. That means treating finance, farmer networks, private sector incentives, and government alignment as interdependent levers that need to move together.

RVO and EKN’s commitment to understanding this landscape and to looking across the full portfolio of Dutch-funded programming and asking hard questions about what actually enables scale, reflects the kind of strategic, evidence-based leadership that the sector needs more of.

Download the report

Image generated using AI on ChatGPT.

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

Meet the girl who wanted to build roads (and factories)

by Gacoki Kipruto/

Meet the girl who wanted to build roads (and factories)

Gacoki Kipruto

Gacoki Kipruto & Stella Odhiambo

Latest posts

Share:

A glimpse into the mind and work of Gacoki Kipruto, Wasafiri’s new Partnerships Manager.

When Gacoki Kipruto was eight years old, she stood at her aunt’s home in Othaya, central Kenya. Plum trees were heavy with fruit, so abundant they couldn’t be eaten, sold, or given away. At the very same time, other parts of Kenya were facing hunger. In her mind, she could see the solution clearly. It was simple: take the food to where it was needed. Problem solved, right?

“Unfortunately, there are no roads,” she was told.

And that answer stayed with her.

It sparked two early ambitions for Gacoki: to one day build the roads that could connect food to people, and to start a plum jam factory so that nothing would go to waste. It was her first encounter with a broken system. And her first instinct was to fix it.

Today, as Partnerships Manager at Wasafiri and Kenya Country Lead at the African Food Fellowship (AFF), Gacoki is doing the work of connecting what exists but doesn’t yet work together.

Gacoki speaking at an AFF event
Gacoki speaking at an AFF event

Learning to see the whole system

Gacoki’s path into systems change wasn’t linear, but that was intentional. Trained in marketing, she quickly found herself drawn to shaping how ideas, services, and solutions reach the people who need them most.

Her early work with organisations like the Eastern African Farmers Federation introduced her to the mechanics of development, such as value chains, financial inclusion, and the quiet complexity of making markets work for those often left out.

Over time, her work spanned agriculture, renewable energy, governance, and inclusive finance. This cross-sector experience gave her the ability to see patterns across systems and identify where connections are missing. An ability she now relies on deeply.

“I’m able to look at a problem from different POVs at once,” she says. “Not just as an agriculture issue, or a nutrition issue, but where those things meet.”

That ability to see the whole while working within the parts is at the heart of her role today.

Bringing people together to move change

At Wasafiri, Gacoki operates at the intersection of relationships and results. She describes Wasafiri as a “first responder”, the one you call when a system isn’t working.

Her work is to bring the right people into the room, help them see the system more clearly, and support them to move forward together by creating the conditions for new discovery.

“I really enjoy facilitation,” she says enthusiastically. “Bringing people to the table and helping them develop their own thinking to discover what’s possible – I love that.”

It’s a style that runs counter to more direct approaches. Gacoki asks the questions that unlock clarity, then helps shape that clarity into action. This approach is amplified through her work with the African Food Fellowship, where she works closely with a diverse network of leaders across Kenya and Africa’s food system. There, she spots opportunities for collaboration, linking ideas, and creating the kind of synergy where “one plus one becomes five.”

What makes her particularly effective is her ability to move fluidly between worlds. She is as comfortable speaking with policymakers and donors as she is with farmers and grassroots organisations. It’s a skill, she says, that is built from curiosity, a trait she names as central to who she is.

“Sometimes you’re a connector. Sometimes you’re documenting what’s working. Sometimes you’re amplifying it,” she explains. “Each person plays their role, but in concert with others.”

What lies ahead?

Looking ahead, Gacoki is energised by the growing recognition that complex challenges cannot be solved in isolation. “There is a sense of urgency about how to respond to a rapidly changing world,” she says.

“I want Wasafiri to be the place people turn to when they need to make sense of complexity, and when they need to think through what to do next.”

It’s a vision that echoes the thinking of that eight-year-old girl, standing between abundance and need, asking a simple question: how do we connect the two?

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

New publication: our recent work with Climate KIC on intermediaries, funding and systems change

by Kate Simpson/

New publication: our recent work with Climate KIC on intermediaries, funding and systems change

Kate Simpson
Kate Simpson

Latest posts

Share:

Are you an intermediary organisation holding relationships that don’t neatly align?

Translating between languages that don’t quite match? Are you expected to deliver certainty in situations defined by uncertainty and be accountable to multiple worlds at once, such as funders, communities, institutions, and partners, all with different incentives, timelines and definitions of success?

If this sounds like you, then this recent paper published by Climate KIC and supported by Wasafiri is for you. The paper is the output of a Global Community of Practice of intermediary organisations, all working in the space of climate adaptation and resilience, but speaks to the tensions intermediary organisations everywhere navigate.

Download the paper
Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

Turning shared ambition into coordinated action

by Stella Odhiambo/

Turning shared ambition into coordinated action

Stella Odhiambo

Latest posts

Share:

How Wasafiri helped align partners to move Grow Africa from vision to implementation and collective momentum

Many multi-stakeholder initiatives stall not because ambition is lacking, but because alignment never fully happens.

The vision is strong. The partners are credible. Political will exists. And yet progress moves far more slowly than expected.

More often than not, the challenge is alignment.

When the World Economic Forum and partners shaped Grow Africa, the ambition was clear: to strengthen collaboration and mobilise investment in African agriculture. Governments, businesses and development actors were engaged. Energy was present.

But ambition alone is not enough to move a system.

In complex environments, actors operate with different incentives, accountabilities and time horizons. Without deliberate alignment, even committed partners can pull in parallel rather than in concert. This is a familiar pattern in complex initiatives. Partners agree on the destination, but struggle to agree on priorities, sequencing, and how their efforts fit together in practice.

Our role was to help partners move from shared aspiration to clearer direction and coordinated action. This meant creating space for honest conversations about roles, priorities and decision-making. It meant looking at the system as a whole — where influence sat, where friction lay, and which shifts could unlock progress.

Rather than adding another layer of strategy, the emphasis was on strengthening the collective ability to decide and act together, and to adapt as conditions changed. This is where our Systemcraft approach became important.

Rather than focusing only on plans or individual actors, Systemcraft helped us look at the incentives, relationships, power dynamics and decision-making structures that shape how change actually happens. By helping partners surface these dynamics together, the process created shared clarity on priorities, roles, and points of leverage.

In practice, this helped partners see how their individual efforts connected to a wider agenda, where coordination was needed, and what practical pathways could move the platform forward. The focus was not simply on designing a strategy, but on strengthening the system’s capacity to align, decide and act collectively.

Over time, the platform reported clearer priorities and stronger coordination across participating actors. Conversations shifted from broad aspiration to practical next steps. Participants were better able to see how their contributions connected to a shared agenda, reducing duplication and strengthening confidence in the platform’s direction.

Grow Africa helped catalyse more than US $10 billion in private-sector investment commitments in African agriculture, with over US $1.8 billion implemented1. Public reporting also indicates these investments reached more than 8.6 million smallholder farmers and created around 58,000 jobs.2

While no single intervention can claim sole credit in a system of this scale, the experience reinforced a core insight: coordinated action is what enables ambition to translate into credible outcomes. For leaders responsible for turning ambition into movement, this capability can be the difference between activity and traction.

Facilitating Action Planning for Systems Change is one of the ways we support partners working on complex challenges. If you would like to explore how this could strengthen your own initiative, please reach out to Ian Randall.

1Partnering to Achieve African Agriculture Transformation (Grow Africa report)

2Grow Africa Leadership Council CoConveners Statement (African Union)

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

Unlocking Africa’s Digital Future Through Partnership and Experimentation

by Cecilia Mwangi/

Unlocking Africa’s Digital Future Through Partnership and Experimentation

Cecilia Mwangi

Latest posts

Share:

Across Africa, technology is shaping how people learn, heal, trade, and entertain themselves.

From mobile money to AI-powered health platforms, digital innovation is opening doors that once seemed firmly shut. But if there is one thing that came through clearly in a recent gathering partner convening, it is this: technology alone will not deliver transformation. It is the ecosystem around it that will. The partnerships, financing, and the culture of experimentation is what will determine whether Africa’s digital future is inclusive, sustainable, and rooted in impact.

At Wasafiri, we see this every day in our work alongside partners across Africa and beyond. Our network of systems-change consultants helps organisations step back, see the bigger picture, and build the collaborations needed to turn innovation into lasting impact. The insights we’ve recently gathered strongly echo the themes that are shaping Africa’s digital future.

Cecilia speaking at a Porticus partner convening workshop
Cecilia speaking at the Porticus Rooted for Impact partner convening in Nairobi. 2025

Tech for Good is more than gadgets and apps

The phrase Tech for Good is gaining momentum across the continent, and rightly so. It captures the idea that innovation is not just about shiny apps or impressive code, but about solving real problems in ways that expand dignity and opportunity for the millions who need it.

Take HEAL, a survivor-centric digital mental health platform designed in Kenya to support those who have experienced sexual and gender-based violence. It combines the reach of technology with the sensitivity of culturally attuned counselling, offering confidential support through an AI-powered therapist. This is Tech for Good at its best. It meets people where they are, with tools that respond to urgent social needs.

And the potential goes far beyond health. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, AI alone could add up to US $1.5 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2030 if the continent captures just 10% of the global AI market.1

Applications range from boosting climate resilience to expanding access to finance and education. Done right, digital innovation can become one of the greatest equalisers of our time.

Why experimentation matters

A shift in mindset from seeing innovation as a high-risk gamble to embracing it as a process of trial, learning, and adaptation will take experimentation. A scary notion for many.

Africa needs to create spaces where startups, researchers, and development partners can “fail fast” and “learn faster”. Iterative prototyping, open innovation, and bold experimentation are essential tools for navigating uncertainty and making limited resources go further.

When innovators have the freedom to test, pivot, and refine, they find creative solutions that rigid, risk-averse systems overlook. This agility is what allows new ideas to grow from fragile pilots into scalable, life-changing services.

The role of policymakers, investors, and funders here is clear: to create safe conditions for experimentation. That means financing early-stage pilots, supporting incubators, running case competitions, and backing mentorship across sectors. By backing the process as much as the product, they enable innovators to take the risks that lead to breakthroughs.

Cecilia speaking at a Porticus partner convening workshop
Cecilia speaking at a Porticus partner convening workshop in Nairobi

Partnerships as the engine of scale

But no single innovator or organisation can build the future alone. Strong partnerships are the glue that holds Africa’s innovation ecosystem together.

We have already seen how collaboration between governments, private investors, civil society, and academia can spark progress. For example, when mobile money took root in East Africa, it scaled because regulators allowed space for experimentation, because telcos invested in infrastructure, and because communities quickly integrated it into daily life.

The same is true today. Whether it’s scaling an ed-tech platform across borders or embedding renewable energy solutions in rural communities, the challenge is less about inventing the technology and more about weaving the right web of relationships around it. Trust, shared vision, and joint investment are what turn bright ideas into systemic transformation.

This is also where Wasafiri has found our role: helping partners see the bigger picture, convene unlikely coalitions, and design the collaborative platforms that enable innovation to take root and scale.

Mobilising capital for African-led innovation

If partnerships are the engine, capital is the fuel. And here, Africa still faces a stubborn gap. Too often, funding for innovation is short-term, donor-driven, or externally designed, leaving local innovators struggling to grow beyond the initial or start-up stages.

This is beginning to change. More African investors are entering the field, and global players are recognising the importance of long-term, locally anchored finance. But the shift needs to accelerate.

Sustainable financing means aligning investment strategies with systemic outcomes. It means measuring success in equity, resilience, and social impact, and not just profits.

At the recent convening, we see that there is also an urgent need to make capital more inclusive. By 2030, Africa is projected to create 230 million new digital jobs, and over 650 million people will need to reskill or upskill2. Ensuring that women, youth, and marginalised groups can access the resources to participate in this future is not optional; it is foundational.

Seeing the bigger picture

At the heart of these conversations lies a hopeful vision. To get there, three shifts are essential:

  1. Embracing a culture of experimentation – normalising “fail fast, learn faster” approaches so that innovation becomes a process of discovery, not a single bet.
  2. Strengthening collaborative ecosystems – building partnerships across sectors and borders to scale what works.
  3. Mobilising sustainable capital – unlocking financing that is long-term, inclusive, and impact-driven.

It is easy to get swept up in headlines about AI breakthroughs or the latest startup on the block. But the deeper story is not about the technology itself. It is about people and the systems they create together.

We believe that Tech for Good in Africa is ultimately a collective endeavour. It is about ensuring that the digital future is not something that happens to Africans, but something shaped by Africans, for Africans.

  1. https://cioafrica.co/tapping-into-ai-to-inspire-inclusion-for-women/
  2. https://www.ifc.org/en/pressroom/2019/ifc-report-finds-130-billion-opportunity-in-digital-skills-across-sub-saharan-africa

    https://www.mastercard.com/news/media/ue4fmcc5/mastercard-ai-in-africa-2025.pdf

    https://technext24.com/2025/05/23/230-million-digital-jobs-created-by-2030/
Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

What a fishing village taught me about transforming complex systems

by Ledama Masidza/

What a fishing village taught me about transforming complex systems

Ledama Masidza
Ledama Masidza

Latest posts

Share:

An interview with Ledama Masidza

When you meet Ledama Masidza, you quickly sense his deep bond with the ocean.

A Marine Conservationist, Indigenous Food Systems Advocate, and natural storyteller, he has dedicated his young and impressive career to working with fishing communities to restore balance between livelihoods and marine life.

Among his proudest achievements is helping secure user rights for a 12,000-hectare co-managed marine area on Kenya’s coast, an effort that has drawn global attention.

Ledama’s journey into conservation began in his childhood, watching how coastal communities depended on the ocean for survival while struggling to keep it alive. That early awareness grew into a passion he carried through university and into his first role in Kuruwitu, a small fishing village in Kilifi County. It was there, he says, that “the ocean became my first classroom in leadership.”

In this conversation with Stella Odhiambo, Ledama shares what he learned in Kuruwitu, why community ownership matters, and how applying a systems approach reveals that youth and local communities already hold the keys to lasting solutions.

Ledama filming for an upcoming documentary
Ledama filming for an upcoming documentary

What first drew you to working with the ocean and coastal communities?

The ocean was my first classroom in leadership. Right after graduating, I found myself in Kuruwitu, a small coastal village in Kilifi County, some 36 or so kilometres from Mombasa, Kenya.

I was working as an environmental program manager, supporting a 30-hectare Locally Managed Marine Area. I would spend long hours restoring coral, doing research, and filming this incredible sanctuary.

Inside, life flourished. Outside, I would find discarded nets, turtles trapped, and reefs stripped bare. It broke my heart. I knew we couldn’t only protect small pockets of ocean…we had to restore the wider seascape. And that could only happen with the community fully in the lead.

What was happening in Kuruwitu’s fisheries, and why was change so urgent?

By 1999, the Kuruwitu fishery had collapsed. 5,000 metric tonnes of fish gone. Regulations existed but were weakly enforced. Beach Management Units, which were supposed to lead governance, had no resources, no training, no leadership support. And unlike land, the ocean has no title deeds.

Fish swim across boundaries. How do you secure tenure over food that moves? That reality pushed me to see conservation differently: you can’t eat conservation. Real conservation is about both biodiversity and livelihoods.

Families were struggling. Fishers would go out to sea and return empty-handed. Young people had little reason to see fishing as a viable future. Without urgent action, both culture and ecology were at risk. That urgency forced us to ask: what would it take to build a community-led system that lasts?

Ledama graduating from the African Food Fellowship
Ledama graduating from the African Food Fellowship

Building a functional, community-led governance system sounds complex. At Wasafiri, we use Systemcraft as a way to make sense of such change. Did you see this approach at play in Kuruwitu?

Absolutely. Supported by Oceans Alive and the Kuruwitu Beach Management Unit, the steps we took align closely with the five dimensions of Systemcraft. My understanding of this approach deepened when I became a fellow of the African Food Fellowship and saw these same dimensions applied not just to oceans, but to food systems across Africa. I saw it lead to real environmental impact.

It began with organising for collaboration. The Beach Management Unit needed legitimacy. So I helped them hold elections. Yes, 21-year-old me! We had to update their constitution and secure legal standing. Without that collective structure, nothing else could have taken root.

Then we had to set the direction. Mapping the fishing grounds with researchers gave the community a clear picture of their territory. Seeing it on a map created a shared sense of responsibility: this is ours to protect.

From there, we turned to harnessing collective intelligence. Not so simple when wary NGO’s refused to share their data with us. We were looking at 1-year-old studies. So we carried out new surveys with fishers, co-creating a baseline of data. This wasn’t abstract research; it was knowledge the community could use to guide decisions.

To make it matter, we brought everyone into the process. I’ll never forget taking stakeholders snorkelling: inside the sanctuary, the reefs teemed with life; outside, they were barren. That single experience spoke louder than any report. I believe it fanned a shared urgency for action.

Finally, we had to change the incentives. Together, the community drafted bylaws on fishing gear, enforcement, and surveillance. It wasn’t easy – because in truth, a broken system works for some people or some of the time. There was definitely some resistance to change, and debates often grew heated. But over time, the rules began to shift behaviours, rewarding stewardship over short-term gain, and giving fishers a reason to protect rather than exploit.

And when the government granted official recognition, it brought us full circle to collaboration again. This time on a larger scale. The community now had both the authority and the partnerships to act as true stewards of their ocean.

Ledama at the Africa Youth Summit in 2024
Ledama at the Africa Youth Summit in 2024

Why is community ownership essential for lasting conservation solutions?

Because only the community can balance survival with stewardship. Outsiders may bring funding or science, but if families go hungry, no project will last. Ownership transforms conservation from an external agenda into a practice rooted in culture and livelihood.

What lessons from Kuruwitu can be applied to wider food systems?

The lesson is this: solutions already exist within communities. Youth and local leaders know their realities better than anyone else. With space, knowledge, and resources, they can transform entire systems, whether fisheries, forests, or food systems.

You’ve described this process as "Collective System Action." How does that link to your approach today?

Collective System Action means no single project or actor can drive transformation alone. Change requires shifting incentives, coordinating coalitions, setting clear direction, making it matter to people’s lives, and continuously learning. That’s what we lived through in Kuruwitu. It wasn’t a linear project; it was a systems journey.

Ledama at COP28
Ledama at COP28

Looking ahead, why do you believe global solutions can and should come from Africa?

Because we’ve already shown it’s possible. What started in Kuruwitu became a model shared at the World Conservation Congress and at COP. From there, it inspired adoption at different levels: by organisations such as African governments and the African Protected Areas Congress at a continental scale, and by global bodies through platforms like Nature Seychelles and the World Conservation Congress.

Today, I co-founded the Local and Indigenous Food Systems Transformation Network (LIFT), connecting communities across continents. Turns out the ideas born on an African coast, a small fishing village, can inspire the world.

In conclusion, systems thinking is not an abstract theory. It is a living, adaptable practice. What Ledama helped build in Kuruwitu shows that communities and youth hold the keys to solving global challenges, starting right here in Africa.

If you’re grappling with a complex social issue and want to understand our approach Systemcraft a little better, see what our easy to grasp, self-led course is all about here: Systemcraft Essentials course by Wasafiri

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

Seeing the system: how systems thinking is helping unlock progress in global eye health

by Scott Hinkle/

Seeing the system: how systems thinking is helping unlock progress in global eye health

Anna McKeon &
Scott Hinkle

Latest posts

Share:

Systems thinking helps us make sense of the messy, interconnected challenges that shape our world. A recent pilot course by Wasafiri and IAPB shows how this approach is transforming how professionals tackle avoidable blindness.

Eye health is the global public health crisis that no one’s talking about. 2.2 billion people, nearly a third of the world’s population, live with some form of sight loss.

The consequences ripple through every part of life: children unable to learn, adults unable to work, and older people unable to live independently. And for half of these people, 1.1 billion people, that sight loss is avoidable. Solutions exist; most are low-cost and proven. So why does avoidable blindness persist?

The answer lies not just in science or infrastructure, but in systems. IAPB (the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness) shared mission is to end avoidable sightloss, and their global strategy embraces the need for transformative systems change to achieve this.

However, there is a leadership gap in eye health, as in many sectors which have developed from clinical professions. Top-down leadership and siloed, competitive approaches are common, and working with a systems mindset is a relatively new idea.

Systemcraft is Wasafiri’s practical approach to tackling complex problems. In 2024, IAPB partnered with Wasafiri to pilot a Systemcraft course tailored for professionals working in eye health. The goal was to help people working in this field think differently, lead more collaboratively, and identify new leverage points to drive lasting change.

This marked the first time the course had been tailored to a specific health issue, bringing together 16 participants from around the world to learn and apply systems thinking to complex challenges in their work. The feedback was clear: systems change is essential in eye health, and this kind of learning community is one powerful way to build it.

What we did: Piloting Systemcraft for the eye health sector

Over eight weeks, participants from across regions and organisations came together to explore the dynamics shaping the eye health system; power, incentives, narratives, structures, and relationships. The course combined self-directed learning with peer coaching calls and asked participants to bring a real problem from their context and work through it using the tools and approaches introduced each week.

What participants valued: New thinking, practical tools, and connection

The course opened up new ways of thinking and acting. As one participant put it, “I found it an eye opener. I had this opportunity to talk about my complex example, I had good conversations with people around the world… Some people advised me with things that I really need to change in my work.”

Others reflected on how useful it was to have both a strategic framework and practical tools: “It’s very hands-on, I must say. That’s what I really appreciated. A very good composition of theory and practical use. Not expensive, easy to go for, and gives a lot of value.”

Participants noted how applicable the learning felt to the real-world complexity of eye health. One explained: “We were not talking about new problems, but we were exposed to different approaches to the current issues we are faced with in the day-to-day. A bit more critical thinking, even categorising the problem, trying to look for stakeholders and people who we can collaborate with. I think that’s a good approach.”

Another highlighted a powerful insight from the course: “The fact that the system is working, but it’s working for a few people. That’s where the problem is. That point really helps to see how best we make changes.”

Participants also valued the chance to learn together. Peer conversations and feedback were central to the experience. One reflected that the group space helped to embed the learning: “The group was where we put things into practice and got to talk about what we’re doing and hear feedback. It was great.”

What we learned: There’s an appetite for systems change… and room to grow

This pilot confirmed that system change matters in eye health and that there is an appetite across the sector to build capability to lead it. Participants saw this work as relevant not just to specific challenges they’re working on now, but to the long-term evolution of their organisations and systems.

“Even though we have not solved the problem, we have at least improved cataract coverage. The more collaborations we do, the more learning we can share with others. So overall, our impact is bound to be more.”

Several participants reflected on who in their organisations should take part in future cohorts, from team managers and Country Directors to anyone involved in shaping internal or external change: “Each change project internally is at least a bit of systems change – so having that kind of understanding and awareness is something to go for.”

At the same time, there were clear areas for improvement. Many wanted more time with peers and facilitators, and a stronger sense of closure. Some found it hard to make time between sessions for reflection and application.

Others suggested delivering the course more intensively over a shorter time period, or aligning future cohorts with major eye health events.

Several participants proposed setting up a community of practice for alumni – recognising that lasting change requires ongoing reflection, connection and support.

As one participant put it: “This course changed the way I’m thinking.”

If you would like to run a cohort course for your organisation, or if you’re facing a complex problem in the social development space and would like to learn more about our process, view the Systemcraft page or reach out to stella@wasafirihub.com.

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share:

How do we know that Systems Change is working?

by Kate Simpson/

How do we know that Systems Change is working?

Carolin Schramm &
Kate Simpson

Latest posts

Share:

At Wasafiri, we spend a lot of time wrestling with big, messy questions. One of the big challenges with systems approaches to change is how do we learn about what is happening? How do we measure change in complex systems?

Traditional monitoring and evaluation (MEL) tools can feel like trying to catch smoke in your hands when you’re dealing with complexity and uncertainty.

We have done a lot of work with partners developing approaches to systems based MEL across systems in food, climate, peace, and livelihoods. We are very much in a learning phase.

To push our practice and share what might be useful to others, we’ve pulled together a work in progress discussion paper: “MEL for Systems Change”.

As a next step, we would love to hear from practitioners:

  • What resonates, what have we missed?
  • What are others learning in their practice?
  • What should we look at next?

We’d love to hear what you think. Whether this sparks new ideas or challenges your own approaches to MEL, drop Carolin a line at carolin@wasafirihub.com.

Read more Wasafiri blogs
Download Systemcraft

Share: