“We have to evolve and move forward together” – ASToN conversations with city leaders
ASToN is a pilot project where 11 African local authorities work together to test and implement their own plans for digital transformation to support sustainable & smart development in their cities. This interview is part of a series of 3 conversations with city leaders in the ASToN network where cities and their local ecosystems are working together for an inclusive digital transition .
Hamadou B.Yalcoulye, Deputy General Director within the Regional Development Agency, is the local coordinator for ASToN project in Mali, Bamako. In 2020, the socio-political crisis put Bamako’s project on hold for 6 months. Although the project was slowed down, the ASToN team is now back on track and is wondering how to expand time. Hamadou spoke to SAAM stad* about Bamako’s method and vision for a smart and inclusive city.
Tell us about your city’s ASToN project?
Our ASToN project focuses on e-tax, but this wasn’t our initial choice. Initially, we had 3 top priorities: first, waste management and sanitation, second, mobility and transport, and third, mobilizing our resources — local finances. Together with our partners involved in this project we had a debate to understand what was the most important problem. During our discussion we realized that in reality the city cannot manage waste and mobility as long as it cannot mobilize enough resources to invest and control these issues, so this topic will continue to be a big obstacle for Bamako. In our discussion group, there were university and civil society representatives, who agreed to support our actions on one condition: the funds management stays transparent and traceable. For this reason we decided to pair e-tax with e-governance, which also oriented us towards our partners.
For us the ASToN project is the occasion to show our municipality can make progress and develop know-how, and thus in the near future apply it to other projects that can solve the existing sanitation and mobility problems.
Who are the people and partners working on this project?
There is the core team around the municipality of Bamako composed of the elected officials of Bamako, an elected official who is in charge of finance issues, one person in charge of the data-processing services, and one communication person. During our application this small group evolved and key services for our theme joined us: the National Police, the brigade of environmental protection, and, later on, the end user represented by the civil society. We are working with the Youth National Council of Mali, an NGO for budget monitoring, and the university. They all help us to make our project sustainable. Additionally, we joined forces with the private sector — the startup world, and the FAMIB group (1) Right now there are around 21 people in the local group.
Which are the challenges of working within such a diverse and large group. What are your secret weapons?
Once we chose our theme, we made a roadmap and we recommended to the municipality to formalize this working group through an official agreement. We asked each partner to name an interlocuteur and each person was marked in the official organizational chart. Additionally in our official roadmap we allocated a sum of money for all these meetings. We have a budget covering all travel costs for participants that are not part of the local administration. Even a symbolic sum helps the NGOs and the volunteers to stay involved in the project and keep up with the pace of work. We knew these costs could become an obstacle, so from the beginning we integrated this into our plan.
Another trick we use is that for real life meetings we plan our breaks. We allocated a budget and each member of our team has a topic to focus on. Another thing is that we adjust to everyone’s needs because we want all our partners involved in our projects. For this we use both letters and emails, we send whatsapp messages as well as making phone calls.
And our secret weapon is the support of Mrs. Camara (2), the first deputy mayor, who is always helping us when there are small blockages in relationship with our partners.
How is it to work with startups and private actors? Can you tell us more about your experience?
The startup world is an immense pool of solutions for our municipality, but they are not always adapted to our administration process. During our first meeting for the research phase we realized that the vision and the working methods are different. While grasping the management of the vignette tax, the startups spotted the problem and came up with a solution in only one hour! But for the participants from the public administration this solution couldn’t be implemented so easily…Startups have a pragmatic approach, but they don’t have the understanding of a public administration, where rules cannot be changed overnight. For example the financial director of the municipality follows rules and processes of public procurement, or the elected representative who needs the decision of the municipal council.
For the core team, one of our objectives is to help the municipality recognize the amount of possibilities coming from the private sector, but also help startups to integrate our internal process. Now we are working with startups to improve their reflection process so we can develop a business model including both our processes and their experience.
How did the ASToN method influence your project and what would you say you learned during this process?
For us ASToN was a triggering point! During the preliminary phase we got to know our local assets when we did a cartography of the local actors and we got to know who is working on what topic. As for the public administration, ASToN allowed all departments to understand who does what, like finances, techniciens, officiels… For our local group, the idea was to put together all these people with their well defined role and help them understand that all this is like a chain, we have to evolve and move forward together.
ASToN also helped us develop a more fluid work method with specific tools to use in our meetings, like how to conduct workshops, or the problem tree analysis. It’s not always easy to mobilize everyone, but we are trying. We also learn a lot from the other cities, because we all have the same problems, but different approaches. It helps us a lot to have them share their experience.
Another aspect is that now we have a better understanding of what digital transition means. Before, for us digital was synonymous with smart city. Ok, but what is a smart city? Is it all connected? And we understood that it’s not! The digital transition allows us to personalize and optimize what we already do. Each city has its own definition of the smart city, a definition based on its local capacity, its local context and its level of connectivity. So we don’t necessarily need an all-connected system with servers and all the rest. We realized that with what we do on a daily basis together with a good use of our resources, we can optimize and have a huge gain. This helped us translate in a more clear way what a smart city is for us. Today we have our own definition of a smart city and we have a vision. And we are adapting this to our modest means so we can start our transition to digital. This is a huge gain, not only for me but for all team members.
Written by Saam Stad.
