Starting this month, we’re kicking off something new and exciting: a collaboration with Enabel, the Belgian government’s development agency with a mission to turn bold ideas into real-world progress.
We’re coming on board as a supporting partner to Enabel’s Innovation Hub, a facility purpose-built to help innovative, impactful, not-for-profit organisations grow and scale. Funded by the European Union, the Hub has already supported 27 projects and is currently backing another 23, with footprints across Africa.
Ideas including: scaling lo-tech learning management systems in Zambia🇿🇲 with World Vision Australia, using heat sensors to advocate for communities in informal settlements in South Africa🇿🇦 with Planact, or embedding digital platforms in government maternal healthcare platforms in Guinea🇬🇳 with Terre des Hommes.
Last week, Abi, Pritika and Asad had the joy of spending an in-person week with these teams and 20 others, from *18* countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
💥 As a sector, we are tackling global aid cuts with solidarity and strategy. A big theme of the week was partnerships. Many of the projects are already starting to think about new partnerships and networks, commercial revenue models, and diversified funder bases. We’re excited to support experimentation in this space.
🚀 No two scale stories are the same. Some non-profits want to shift a specific government policy. Others want to shift cultures and defaults. Some want to build out an operating model for the government to adopt. Others want to open source or encourage replication by different organisations. Fred, from Planact, put it well: “you can scale up, down, horizontally, deeply or not at all”. We loved working with teams to explore different endgames (inspired by Gugelev & Stern’s 2015 paper). And yes, we also loved the Marvel memes in our bootcamp Whatsapp group.
🏡 Community came up time and again. Teams are making community voices heard: for example, Farm Radio International’s open-source programme to translate, transcribe and analyse farmer voice messages in Swahili & Luganda. Teams are giving communities tools to steward local assets: for example INWI is building a platform for people to collect and analyse data on water quality. And of course, the community of pioneering non-profits and Enabel’s Innovation Hub, who will all support each other as they learn and scale.
We’re looking forward to working closely with the brilliant Enabel team, including Toon Driesen, Alice Bonjean, Lucile Ceglarski, Michel Komlan Seto, Maureen Leyen, Koen Verrecht, Joke Van Belle, Latifah Abdou, and Amandine Van der Aa.
The Enabel Innovation Hub is currently supporting 23 innovations through Belgium’s Wehubit 2.0 programme and three EU-funded initiatives: the Data Governance in Africa Initiative (DGA), the Digital and Green Innovation Joint Action (DGI), and the Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa (RTIA).
