ResilientAfrica Network
(RAN)
www.ranlab.org
RAN
• RAN is one of 7 university
development labs under the (HESN)
OST of USAID
– RAN will bring together a network of 20
African universities in 16 countries
– Makerere (Lead), Stanford University
(Innovations), Tulane University
(Resilience), and CSIS as core partners
4/13/2015
2
Background
• Rationale for RAN: Although
development efforts have saved lives,
they have not sufficiently built resilience
of target communities; the same
shocks/stresses recur with similar
consequences
• RAN seeks to break these negative cycles
by tapping into the adaptive capacities
of communities to develop solutions
Theory of Change
‘The resilience of people and systems in Africa
will be strengthened by leveraging knowledge,
scholarship and creativity in RAN to incubate,
test, and scale innovations that target
capabilities and reduce vulnerabilities identified
by an evidenced-based resilience framework for
sub-Saharan Africa’………
Methodology and Philosophy
• Resilience can be tackled through innovations
• 2 approaches to sourcing innovations:
– Acceleration of existing promising ideas
– Ideation of new ideas
• Design thinking and Human centred design
• Failure is good; failing fast is even better
Objectives of RAN
• Objective (1) Design resilience
framework for Sub-Saharan
Africa
• Objective (2) Strengthen
resilience of communities
through innovations
• Objective (3) Enhance
resilience-related knowledge
generation and sharing
RAN definition of
Resilience
• Resilience is the capacity of people and
systems to mitigate, adapt to, recover and
learn from shocks and stresses in a manner
that reduces vulnerability and increases wellbeing.
RAN’s resilience
framework
Step 1. Context
Analysis
Resilience of
Whom, what,
where and when?
Step 2. Resilience
Dimensions
What makes
communities
capable
What makes them
incapable?
Stakeholder
engagement,
ownership,
Sustainability and
institutionalization
Step 4. Evaluation
To what extent did
interventions improve
capacities and address
vulnerability?
Step 3. Resilience
Interventions
What innovations
would most
effectively address
resilience in this
community?
4 RILabs, 6 Resilience
Themes
• RAN’s centres for ideation, development, and
testing of innovations
– Eastern Africa (Makerere, Gulu, Rwanda, Kinshasa, Muhimbili):
• Resilience to the effects of climate variability and chronic conflict
– West Africa (UDS-Tamale, Winneba, Mali, Senegal):
• Resilience to the effects of rapid urbanization and food insecurity in marginal
populations
– Southern Africa (Pretoria, Limpopo, Lilongwe, Zimbabwe):
• Resilience to food and income insecurity in HIV high burden communities
– Horn of Africa (Jimma, Addis, Benadir):
• Resilience to the effects of drought and conflict
4/13/2015
9
Building the network
• A solid network of 14 university partners that
cuts across 4 regions in Africa created to
tackle resilience challenges
• Immense resource of over 100,000 students,
faculty, scholars and brains
4/13/2015
10
Engagement of students,
faculty and stakeholders
• RAN has started intense engagement of
faculty and students at Central level and
regional levels
4/13/2015
11
Generating the evidence
base to inform innovations
• A massive data collection drive launched
across Africa to develop a solid evidence base
for RAN’s innovations agenda
• Starting with qualitative data collection on the
community’s understanding of resilience,
what makes them resilient and indigenous
adaptation
4/13/2015
12
RAN’s approach to solutions will be
driven by community needs......
What makes people resilient? What is
the current state of vulnerability? Can
we learn from the way communities
are adapting? What solutions do they
propose?
Innovations agenda
Taken to RILabs, torn apart and
built innovations with feedback
loops with community
Taken to scale in the community
4/13/2015
13
Understanding the
university environments
• Understanding the environment in partner
universities is crucial to understanding their role in
resilience programming
4/13/2015
14
RAN’s innovation pipeline
Evidence
Qualitative
Quantitative
Dimension
1
Thematic
priority
Dimension
2
From pathways to solutions
Design thinking
Human-centred design
Rapid prototyping
P1
S1
P2
S2
P3
S3
P4
S4
Resilience Innovation
Testing
Scaling
Intervention
1
Develop
through a
resilience
lens
More
resilient
communities
Intervention
2
EVALUATION
Dimension
3
15
What is a resilience innovation?
• A ‘technology’ or ‘science based approach’ with the
potential to demonstrably impact on a dimension of
resilience in a community
• 3 ways of sourcing innovations
– Existing ideas at prototype level, needing a ‘push’
– Completely new ideas developed out of ‘ideation sessions
and human centred design processes’
– Design and implementation of collaborative platform
projects
At the centre of RAN’s
interventions……
• The community
• 18 ‘test’ communities across Africa
Examples of
emerging ideas
• Matibabu: Revolutionising the diagnosis of Malaria
• Unearthing the potential of earth-worms
• Root IO (Radio in a box) – every phone owner is a
potential resilience broad-caster
• Improved Push and Pull: Scaling a natural approach
to nuisance weed and pest repulsion
• Low cost optimized solar pump to change farming in
semi-arid areas
Next steps
• Resilience data has been analysed to feed into an
intervention strategy process
• Each RILab is developing a set of evidence based
intervention pathways and innovation challenges
• University faculty will mentor and nurture new ideas;
successful ideas will be taken to scale in target
communities
RAN Team
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Chief of Party: Prof. William Bazeyo
Deputy Chief of Party: Dr. Roy William Mayega
Executive Director Resilience: Prof. Ky Luu, Tulane
Senior Technical Advisor: Prof. David Serwadda
Director Innovations: Dr. Wanjiku Nganga
Director Resilience: Ms. Deb Elzie, Tulane
PI Stanford: Prof. James Fishkin
M&E Manager: Dr. Harriet Namata
Communications Manager: Ms. Harriet Adong
Engagement Manager: Ms. Deborah Naatujuna
Research Officer: Mr. Nathan Tumuhamye
RAN Administrator: Ms. Deborah Namirembe
EARILab Director: Dr. Dorothy Okello
EARILab Program Coordinator: Dr. Julius
Ssentongo
EARILab Innovations Officer: Ms. Carol Kamugira
EARILab Technical Officer: Ms. Sheila Agaba
EARILab Administrator. Ms. Ann Burugu
Other RILab teams
• HoA RILab team
led by Prof. Kifle
• SA RILab team led
by Prof. Lekan AyoYusuf
• WA RILab Team
led by Mr. Denis
Chirawurah