Have We Really Made Progress? A Four-Part Manifesto for Change

For almost fifteen years, kiwanja.net has been home for our hopes, dreams and frustrations on all things technology, social innovation, and international conservation and development. During that time, we’ve widely traveled, spoken, published, built, consulted, mentored and despaired.

It’s been an incredible journey that started in early 2003 on the fringes of Kruger National Park, and we’ve had plenty of opportunities to see what does and what doesn’t work along the way. Crucially, we’ve stayed small and independent over that time, allowing us to remain honest and challenging when and where we need to be.

One of our earlier, seminal posts from 2009 – “Time to eat our own dog food?” – challenged the sector to not waste the opportunity that mobile phones gave us, asking:

Is the future of social mobile an empowered few, or an empowered many? Mobile tools in the hands of the masses presents great opportunity for NGO-led social change, but is that the future we’re creating?

Sadly, much of the same argument outlined in that post can be applied today, placing something of a question mark over what progress we’ve made. We know, for example, that many projects still rarely optimize for their beneficiaries and the environments in which they operate, and despite what they often claim, many set out as solutions looking for a problem. Too many initiatives still lead with technology, and fail to scale into sustainable programs – in part because donors are constantly under pressure to disburse funds to new and ‘innovative’ projects, rarely giving older projects time to mature.
There is still no minimum standard for funding development projects, either. As a result, money struggles to find it’s way to the projects most likely to succeed, and a vicious cycle ensues. Worse still, despite talk of local capacity building and ownership, the vast majority of programs are still conceptualized, executed and funded by outsiders who parachute in.

It’s much harder, yet undoubtedly more productive, to offer ways forward. Tweet This Quote

And to top it all, as a sector we still lack a shared vision of the future we all should be working towards. All of this adds up to a cycle of underperformance, perpetuated by the fact that feedback loops between donors, practitioners, policy makers, academia, civil society and program beneficiaries remain at best weak. We can, and should, be better than this.

One thing I’m particularly proud of is that we’ve offered solutions when we’ve identified problems over the years. It’s far too easy to rant about how rubbish everything is, and it goes without saying that it’s much harder, yet undoubtedly more productive, to offer ways forward. Over the past few years in particular, many of those bigger ideas have sufficiently matured to allow us to launch our new Four-Part Manifesto for Change.

This new Manifesto focuses on four areas in particular that we feel need positive disruption in our field.

1. Painting a Shared, Future Vision

Working closely with innovators and entrepreneurs from the places where the problems exist, we propose the creation of a new policy paper that helps us achieve a future where local innovators and local innovations drive the development agenda. You can download a summary PDF of that proposal here.

2. A New Code of Conduct for Donors

We believe that donors are in an ideal position to stem the flow of poorly thought-out or inadequately planned technology-for-development projects and propose the adoption of a Charter to put things right. You can read about that here.

3. Seriously Get Behind Our Top Talent

Offering long-term support to some of our top talent would increase the chances of them – and us – having a positive global impact. We focus too much on projects and not the people who drive them. You can read our thoughts on a new Global Fellowship Program here.

4. Time to Answer the Big Question

Do international development projects designed and managed at grassroots level perform better than those managed from the outside? The debate rages, so we propose a development challenge to help us find the answer. You can read more about how that might work here.

To reach our full potential, and to alleviate as much suffering on the planet as possible, we need to be bold, embrace appropriate innovation and be open to disruption in our own sector, not just others. We need to face up to our problems, failures and inefficiencies, and be brave in seeking new solutions when things go wrong. Our Manifesto offers four new solutions to four of those long-standing problems.

We hope this might be the start of a wider, bolder conversation where we begin putting into action projects and programs that put the needs of the people we seek to help before those of ourselves or our organizations – however uncomfortable that may be.

You can read more on our Manifesto at hackingdevelopment.org.

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This originally published on Ken’s blog.