5 ways African local authorities can source solutions for their city

As a local authority working towards a vision of your city’s future, it’s quite common to find designing solutions a real challenge. And if you have already identified some potential solutions, you’ll need to find the right partners to take them forward. So to best address these challenges, the ASToN network has been exploring how local authorities can source ideas and partners to tackle problems in innovative ways.

ASToN is a network of changemakers across 11 local authorities who are coming together to conduct digital transformation projects within their cities.

In ASToN, we’ve explored the role of citizens and other stakeholders in co-design or participatory design, including how to involve people in the design of solutions, and how to keep them involved in the project throughout. But what are the mechanisms for drawing out, selecting and developing these ideas? And what do we need to bear in mind when doing so?

For example, local authorities will need to consider whether they have the capabilities or preference to build a solution themselves, or bring in partners.

Over the last year, each of the 11 ASToN cities have defined a problem and articulated a vision for the future they want to pursue. Now the work begins to figure out the best (cheapest, sure, but also fastest, most inclusive, sustainable and most impactful) ways to achieve it.

In March 2021, as part of ASToN City Week, the local authorities took some time to think about the best ways to source solutions to take this vision forward.

We were joined by a dazzling panel of speakers, who each spoke to different ways cities can source and develop solutions.

• Emmanuel Adegboye (Managing Partner @ Utopia): focuses on sustainable urban development and economic opportunities for youth in Africa.
• Nekesa Were (Director of Strategy @ AfriLabs): has worked at the heart of Kenya’s and Africa’s technology and innovation sector for the last 10 years.
• Abi Freeman (Founding Partner @ Brink & Lead Expert @ ASToN): uses psychology, strategy, behaviour design and design thinking to create innovation
• Gabriel Malka (Director @ l’Institut des Sciences Médicales, Biologiques et des Métiers de la Santé, UM6P): leading medical doctor and surgeon, researcher and administrator
• Bojan Bozovic (Principal Consultant @ IMC Worldwide): testing the use of cutting-edge technology applications such as UAVs, Blockchain, 3D Printing, IoT, and more
• Omontayo Houehoube, Director of Strategic, Financial and Infrastructure Projects,& Abdou Ambarka, Digital Infrastructure Manager, Seme City

The 5 main methods we spoke about were:

1. Hackathon: an event where people come together to generate ideas to creatively solve problems, often building and testing ideas in teams during the event
2. Innovation Prize: A reward (financial or other) for whoever can first or most effectively meet a predefined challenge.
3. Marketplace of ideas:Engaging a ‘crowd’ or group for a common goal — to generate ideas, or to prioritise or test them.
4. Industry expo: Companies in a specific industry are invited to showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services to the government often leading to some being invited to tender.
5. Public private partnerships:A partnership where the public and private parties share the risk and responsibilities in achieving goals.

Here are my three key takeaways from the session:

1. See what’s out there

One of the crucial things we learned about the solution was that there are many different ways to generate ideas and find partners — but you need to find the one that best fits your needs. Additionally, there might already be a solution out there to solve these needs. Consider if there is genuinely no solution to the problem that already exists before generating new ideas.

1. Understand your ecosystem

A big part of successfully designing and implementing solutions comes from how you collaborate with different groups of stakeholders, especially by understanding the existing ecosystem out there. Across different African cities, digital ecosystems are particularly growing fast, from universities to unions, private companies, incubators, and other tech hubs.

Members of the ASToN network are encouraged to create a Local Action Group in their city, bringing together government, private sector, startups, citizens, and more. As one of our panelists said: “It’s hard to fail when you have the engagement from local groups — they are closest to the problem.” To read more about the digital ecosystems of ASToN cities and their Action Groups, check out the network’s Baseline Study.

Finally, Nekesa Were reminded the network to “think of your role as a catalyst”: who is best placed to do the work, who is already doing the work that you might want to partner with, and how can you catalyse change in your city?

1. Long-term engagement and fit

This is about thinking carefully about what comes next — is there ownership beyond the hackathon / event? What do you need to put in place in order to facilitate and incentivise the growth of ideas beyond these moments? Many of our speakers had organised hackathons and other large events, but the biggest challenge that resonated with them was the question of “so what?”, or what comes next from this work.

Making sure you have the resources to commit to solutions, and that the nature of the commitment is clear to potential partners, is really important.

Based on what we heard from the panelists we created this simple decision tree to help readers consider which approach is most appropriate to them:

What’s next

The aim of the “Sourcing Solutions” session was to help local authorities explore a wide range of techniques and structures for developing ideas and partners towards their city vision. The challenge now for these cities will be using this advice in practice, given that each city and the problem they want to tackle is, naturally, very different.

However, by seeing what’s already out there, understanding the ecosystem, and thinking about long-term engagement and fit, we are confident that any local authority will be in a good place to try out some of these methods and find exciting solutions to develop.