PLAYLIST: Digested TED talks on delivering change in Africa

by Kate Simpson/

No time to watch all those interesting TED talks? Well we’ve watched (some) of them and here is our 1 minute summary of three of the most interesting and recent with something to say on change in Africa.

For Africa it is all about jobs, leaders and building strong institutions. In countries with weak institution you need good leaders – who can build the strong institutions to protect the country from bad leaders. And Africa needs jobs, lots of jobs – by 2030 the continent will have a bigger workforce than China and that means a  924 million people. Ultimately these jobs need to come predominantly from the private sector and so you need entrepreneurs – and lots of them. Fred is hoping that the African Leadership Academy and the African Leadership Network will be a part of creating these leaders and entrepreneurs that the continent needs.

Who are the biggest senders of money to developing world countries? Migrants are. Remittance payments from international migrants amount to  413 Billion US Dollars per year, or three times as much as ALL the development aid money given by governments. This money tends to move in small amounts and go directly to poor people – it has a direct, measurable, positive impact on development indicators such as birth weight, school attendance and GDP. Yet there are significant barriers and costs to getting this money moving. Diip Ratha’s call for action is to make this money easier and cheaper to send – and he has a plan for donors, social entrprenures and businesses alike on just how to do that.

 

Not the hopeless but the hopeful continent – Charles Robertson argues  (with some stats and some economist talk) that, as a continent, things in Africa are just getting better and  better.  From economic growth, to the quality of leadership, to reduced corruption, increased education levels and even reduced malaria, he paints a positive and optimistic picture of Africa and calls for the 21st Century to be the century of Africa. While his talk is sweeping and generalist – and his argument disguises huge variety and variation across the continent – it’s still a welcome and useful antidote to the stories of negativity that often dominate talk of Africa.

And if all that is a bit too serious, here is a satirical look at a particular African Stereotype. This one is much better to watch than to read about (and its only 3 mins long).

http://www.ted.com/watch/ads-worth-spreading/lets-save-africa

 

Interested in practical insights on how to deliver change in Africa?

by Kate Simpson/

Download Change Perspectives – Wasafiri Insights 2014 For  some practical tips and ingredients on how to deliver change.

In the last year Wasafiri consultants have worked across Africa delivering change in diverse settings and on diverse projects. Working with private, government and NGO clients and across the continent we have tried, succeeded, failed and learnt new lessons about how to deliver change in Africa. ‘Change Perspectives’ is our new short report that shares  some of the practical insights we have gained.

Change Lab Rwanda: how to create public private sector collaborations?

by Kate Simpson/

What do a hotel developer, a community arts innovator, investment manager, a diplomat, several entrepreneurs and a lot of clever, interesting people have in common? They are all part of delivering change in Africa, all interested in creating public private sector collaborations and all came to our first ever Change Lab in Rwanda.

Thank you to all who came it was a lovely evening of interesting people, from diverse backgrounds and organisations exploring, sharing and learning about how the private and public sector can collaborate to deliver change in Africa. We will be doing another change lab here in Rwanda in the new year and bringing it to Nairobi too  – so let us know what topic would you like to see the next lab focus on?

Rwandan statistics lifted from 10th to 2nd-best in sub-Saharan Africa

by Hamish Wilson/

In 2011, the World Bank had ranked Rwanda’s statistical capacity as 10th in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2012, the country had jumped to being second only to Mauritius. The intervening year saw Wasafiri embedded within the National Institute of Statistics to manage a change programme that would transform Rwanda’s capacity to manage statistics.

Monitoring a country’s development progress requires a variety of socio-economic data. Until 2005, this was collected in Rwanda by several institutions under different government ministries. The National Institute of Statistics (NISR) was then created to establish a more integrated approach, with a UNDP-managed basket fund set up to support its implementation.

However, NISR performance fell short of stakeholder expectations due to a number of shortcomings, including poor budget execution, no release calendar for producing quality data, inadequate coordination of statistical activities, and limited dissemination of statistics.

In 2010, the Institute launched its National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS), complete with a now NISR-managed basket fund for implementing the 5-year plan. This posed a question of how a young institution with limited management capacity and only 50% of staff in post, could effectively raise and manage around US$80 million where the better-resourced UNDP had not succeeded?
Rwanda-National-Agriculture-Survey

One of Wasafiri’s Principal Consultant’s, Liberal Seburikoko, was embedded in to NISR and led the transformative change required to ensure the plan’s successful implementation.

Our starting point was to hold one-to-one consultations with all key internal and external stakeholders to assess the prevailing situation, whilst identifying opportunities for forging authentic partnerships. We then embarked on a clear systemic change agenda, focusing from the outset on empowering identified champions of change to drive the process.

Throughout our engagement, we focused on shaping new behaviours at all levels (e.g. more disciplined budgeting and planning, and improved accountability and delegation), with flexibility and adaptability also encouraged within the NISR and among donors. Finally, we developed management tools and frameworks to transition from capacity enhancement to an enduring legacy of actionable mechanisms.

The outcome has been extremely rewarding, with the NISR now perceived as an institutional role model both locally and abroad, drawing positive assessments from auditors and stakeholders alike, and securing additional resources from newly-interested non-traditional sources. The NISR is now on course to breaking yet another record, by releasing its 2012 Census results six months ahead of schedule.

Boosting Rwanda’s capacity to implement environmental policy

by Hamish Wilson/

The Rwandan Ministry of Natural Resources (MINIRENA) has a remit to coordinate, formulate policy and provide guidance on policy implementation to the environment and natural resources (ENR) sector. The latter is made up of a number of sub-sectors (environment, lands, water resources management, mines and forestry) that provide critical inputs towards poverty reduction efforts within the country, including in rural areas.

Policy implementation in particular is often a daunting task and calls for a dynamic, iterative process that unfolds differently in varying contexts.  One of the key considerations in this regard is the need for sustained capacity at individual, institutional and organisational levels. MINIRENA is a relative newcomer, having only been created in 2011 following a merger between the former Ministry of Lands and Environment and the Ministry of Forestry and Mines. As such, it is still in the process of rebuilding itself.

To assist with this process, UNDP Rwanda commissioned Wasafiri to assess the gaps in MINIRENA’s capacity to effectively deliver on its mandate within the ENR sector. The recommendations which resulted have highlighted specific areas that need strengthening within MINIRENA, which has in turn helped inform UNDP Rwanda programming with respect to capacity building interventions for the next 5 years.

Integrating gender into Burundi’s transitional justice mechanisms

by Hamish Wilson/

Women in Burundi have faced structural inequalities and systemic discrimination due to attitudes deeply embedded in the collective psyche of Burundians. These inequalities were exacerbated by cycles of political violence (and impunity) that shook the country. Yet despite bearing this heavy burden, women have played a crucial role in the search for peace and in reconciling warring communities.

In 2011, the Government of Burundi established a Technical Committee (which submitted its report in October 2011) with a view to paving the way for the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Women’s groups led advocacy and awareness campaigns for the inclusion of gender equality issues within the terms of reference of these transitional justice mechanisms.

In late 2012, UN Women contracted Wasafiri precisely to develop a strategy for mainstreaming gender into the country’s nascent transitional justice mechanisms, and specifically as a crucial contribution towards the establishment of the TRC, which was anticipated to take place in 2013. The strategy was used by UN Women to lobby and advocate for a gender-sensitive TRC. In early December 2013, the Burundian Minister of Gender and National Solidarity drew on the strategy in his defence of the government’s proposal on the TRC before the country’s parliament.

Although the parliamentary debate on some TRC issues remains heated, a large consensus has been built around the need to integrate gender into the TRC, based firmly on the benchmarks highlighted in the Wasafiri-produced strategy.

Taking a systemic approach to address health and HIV challenges

by Hamish Wilson/

Christian Aid’s recently launched global strategy, Partnership for Change, emphasizes that in order for Community Health and HIV programmes supported by the organisation to be more effective, they must move away from an exclusive focus on service delivery and directly address the systems and structures keeping people in poverty, a major barrier to accessing healthcare.

To assist in realising this goal, Wasafiri supported Christian Aid in designing and delivering a ‘Community Health for All’ workshop in Nairobi for relevant partner and programme staff, held in January 2013. The workshop agenda was framed around the three pillars of Christian Aid’s Community Health and HIV work, namely: ensuring sound health development approaches, equitable institutions and equitable social norms, which if addressed systematically, create an improved enabling environment for people to access health services.

The gathering provided those participating with an opportunity to explore what the shift in focus entailed by the new strategy means in practice for their current work, and what active steps to take to boost the performance of their programmes.

Partner and programme staff were equipped with concrete learnings and recommendations to help them apply the strategy in their own specific working contexts, so as to enable entire communities to exercise and claim their rights to essential health services.

Click here to visit blogs, photos, and videos from the workshop

6a00d83452228b69e2017d406e5f84970c

Strategic partnership forged to unlock finance for smallholders

by Hamish Wilson/

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) recognises the importance of strengthening finance services for African agricultural transformation. This is even more the case as CAADP enters a new phase of supporting countries with implementation of their respective agricultural investment plans. However, the CAADP partnership currently lacks the expertise, resources and networks now required to adequately support countries in strengthening agri-finance.

Wasafiri Directors, Ian and Liberal worked together on linking MFW4A and CAADP

The Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) partnership is an initiative that is very well-positioned to respond to this need. In 2008, MFW4A defined agricultural finance as a priority, going on in 2011 to produce a policy brief on agricultural finance in Africa and the Kampala Principles, constituting a set of policy actions that are urgently needed to unlock agri-finance in Africa.

The challenge became how to mainstream the Kampala Principles and the policy brief recommendations into the CAADP framework. Wasafiri Consulting was contracted to provide an answer to this question, while building momentum between the two initiatives to combine CAADP’s political strength with MFW4A’s technical expertise to help solve the puzzle of African agri-finance.

The report produced by Wasafiri offered invaluable strategic and operational recommendations, and importantly facilitated mutual understanding and the establishment of an on-going symbiotic relationship between the two partnerships, a pivotal step forward in the quest to meet the financing demands of Africa’s agricultural transformation.

Consensus on organisational structures that are fit for purpose

by Hamish Wilson/

When the Regional Centre for the Quality of Health Care (RCQHC) was set up in 1999, it was agreed that it would be temporarily hosted and administered by Makerere University in Uganda. However, when this arrangement continued for over ten years, the underlying institutional arrangements were perceived as not being “fit for purpose”.

Wasafiri was accordingly called upon in August 2011 to assist RCQHC in making some fundamental decisions about the purpose of its existence, and its structure and ways of working. The ultimate aim was to generate a set of recommendations on a possible legal autonomous model that would enable the Centre to operate at optimum capacity.

During preparations for the assignment, and especially when carrying out the diagnostic phase, Wasafiri’s guiding principle was that of giving our undivided attention to the client, listening with deep respect and without any sense of judgement. The views and reflections of the various stakeholders who were consulted on the type of institutional arrangements that would enable the RCQHC to function even more effectively were captured faithfully and analysed.

The draft report produced by Wasafiri, within the space of around 10 days, presented a range of feasible options. Responding to the draft report, the Director of RCQHC wrote to Wasafiri praising it as a “truly a professional job” and remarking “You are experts at helping organisations”.