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Knowledge Transfer for Greater Impact
Hosted by Almaz Negash (March 2010)
The case of Sub-Saharan Africa
In the United States, we have an amazing number of social entrepreneurs whose mission it is to create social good. I personally have been fortunate to know and work with many of these incredible innovators and passionate advocates. While in meetings, whether with Sea Water Farms, Global Women Leadership Network at Santa Clara University, WE CARE SOLAR of Berkeley, ENERMIX in San Francisco, I have blatantly asked these social entrepreneurs, “Do you have plans to train local Africans, to share and transfer knowledge?” Consistently, they have answered, “Yes,” followed by, “But how and then when?”
Africa’s challenges are big and complex, requiring co-creative collaboration on a large scale, requiring a massive amount of collective innovation from a variety of nonprofits, NGOs, multilateral organizations, governments, corporations, foundations, and individuals working together to create the knowledge infrastructure that we wish to see in Africa.
Recently, I asked Dr. Laura Stachel, Founder and Director of WE CARE Solar, what her thoughts were on training and skill development. Here is what she said:
We believe that knowledge transfer is the key to development and empowerment. WE CARE Solar has designed a technology to improve healthcare delivery in regions without reliable electricity—the “solar suitcase.” Our turnkey portable solar electric systems literally “light up” clinics and hospitals in Africa and allow healthcare workers to provide better care at night. We know that the technology improves services to maternity patients and even improves the motivation and morale of healthcare workers. But if we don’t provide knowledge transfer about the technology, we foster a system of dependency, where Africans are reliant on Westerners for the technology.
For years, the focus of every development has been on poverty reduction, rather than on skilled labor creation and on encouraging Africans to solve their own problems. Now we have an opportunity to create skilled labor force training programs by leveraging traditional and modern education systems.
A few weeks ago, Wendy Walleigh, a consultant at TechnoServe, was on a panel at an African Summit that I facilitated. Her talk focused on training and skill building. Later I asked her if she could share her thoughts on knowledge transfer. Here is what she said:
Transferring of knowledge is critical to capacity building in tandem with ongoing support, reinforcement, and success along the way. Thus, individuals with transferred knowledge can continue to expand their experience, content knowledge, and skill set, then coach/mentor/transfer that over the longer-term to the community in which they are embedded. Building the capacity of farmers in cooperatives or businesses in a peer network can continue to benefit themselves, their neighbors, and their larger region.
There are many such social entrepreneurs dedicated to training and developing skilled labor in Africa with the goal to transform societies from within. To do that, we must ask the following questions:
1. What needs to take place before we can even discuss knowledge transfer—in this case, skills development?
2. How do we engage the African Diaspora professionals to be a part of the long-term economic solution in Africa?
3. How do we go about creating the system/infrastructure that will support those social entrepreneurs who are willingly trying to transfer knowledge?
4. How do we bring dramatic new forms of public/private partnerships to provide a stronger support network for Africa?
5. How do we mobilize highly qualified and self-motivated African social entrepreneurs for capacity building?
We need to continue the dialogue to address these questions and many others to be able to develop collaborative systems that will allow Africans to have access to new ideas and knowledge. Join Almaz Negash, with Entwine Global, in the conversation.
Information as catalyst
I offer a paragraph from our founding paper which addresses this topic and describes how access to information could catalyse the global replication of a new way of doing business, through inclusive capitalism.
"In order for economic development to take place in any given location, the very first thing required, before anything else can possibly happen, is information. This information includes first and foremost where to look for the necessary resources to do anything. If new businesses are needed, knowing they are needed and finding funding for them are two very different things. The first step is to locate possible capital resources in order to move forward, and this step is no more and no less than information. Once resources are located, the next step is what terms and conditions are involved in obtaining those resources -- more information. Once this is known, paperwork must be completed, business plans made, market research and due diligence conducted, and all of this compiled and forwarded to the appropriate parties. Again, nothing more than information. In fact, most of the work involved between identifying a need and solving the problem is information acquisition and management: getting and developing information."
http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/history/
We'd taken the decision that sharing information was just as much about social enterprise as anything else. hence our papers an projects have all been publicly visible. Unfortunately, we've barely touched on Africa, remaining mostly focussed on Eastern Europe.
One of these projects was our 2006 'Marshall Plan' strategy for Ukraine which put forward suggestions for innovation through microcredit, affordable broadband deployment and childcare reform.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/projects/ukraine/national/
A social enterprise faculty and investment fund was proposed to unleash local innovation potential. A new USAID foundation followed and set up partnerships with other organisations who provide fellowships for training young people in becoming community leaders.
This approach above all is about leveraging the political will to get investment in empowering local bottum up economic development. It's not a benevolent franchising model. It's also about standing up to corruption and saying no.
It's brought others in. Microsoft for example opening one of their Innovation Centers in the very same university where the social enterprise faculty was proposed.
I have one or two contacts in Uganda and Ghana and we'd be more than ready to expand that into this kind of national scale action, but there's just two of us.
Gabriel in Ghana for example wanted to create a local telecentre based on these deveelopment principle, Fred in Uganda is struggling to maintain his computer club for orphans. So far we've been able to offer only advice.
I believe we have some solutions, which will necessarily require adjustment to African circumstances. The principle however is the same, economics based on the needs of people first.