Developing Change Agents to Spawn Grass Roots Innovation and Transformation in Africa
Lessons Learned from Rural Africa Could Apply to Your Organization!
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Senior Consultant, April 10, 2009

NETTING IT OUT

The Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT) has become a hotbed of innovative practices in integrated rural development. In this report, we focus on the innovations that URDT has created and the unique innovation transfer process that they are currently piloting through the training and deployment of committed young women as change agents in rural communities.

Many other development efforts have failed to create long-lasting results because too often any progress made by an individual is cut short by the weakest link in that person’s life. For example, a child might successfully enroll in school, but then die of malaria. Or a woman might learn how to start a small business, but then be prevented by her husband from doing so.

URDT provides an integrated approach based on the concept that to achieve lasting development, people must become empowered in all areas of their lives, including education, health, economic self-reliance, human rights, and civic participation. Since its inception, URDT has helped thousands of people improve their lives and has received accolades from international organizations for its innovative approaches.

URDT’s training of local people, especially women, to become leaders and creators, is changing the way rural communities work. Might similar practices work to spark customer-led innovation among your stakeholders?

Take-Aways for Fostering Innovation and Replicating the Innovation Process

Here are the take-aways from URDT’s proven approach to grass roots innovation which has been successful in rural Uganda for over 20 years:

Build a Culture of Customer-Led Innovation

• Promote a creative orientation (within and outside your organization).

• Instill multi-disciplinary, holistic systems thinking as a cultural norm

• Engage community members and stakeholders in co-design

How to Replicate Your Innovation Engine

• Attract and train visionary change agents.

• Ground them in creative orientation, visionary leadership, customer co-design, cross-disciplinary systems thinking, and practical skills.

• Send them out to seed and nurture innovation by working with customers in the field; Let them learn by doing, failing, and learning from their mistakes. Provide coaching and celebrate successes.

• Network your change agents together and to the “mother ship” to share learnings and innovations from the field.

The Uganda Rural Development and Training (URDT) Programme Does Not Rescue People

It Empowers Them to Create Better Lives

From Poverty

Photo: URDT

To Prosperity

Photo: Nick Korn

URDT’s innovations in rural development have improved the lives of thousands of rural Ugandans in nine counties. The house on the left is the typical rural house. On the right, African Rural University students are talking with a villager whose diversified farming has enabled him to begin construction on a new, brick home. The URDT approach ignites the creative drive within the people it touches.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP A SUCCESSFUL CUSTOMER-LED INNOVATION PRACTICE?

How do you build a successful, repeatable customer-led innovation practice and culture? We tend to look for innovation best practices and examples from corporate R&D labs, vibrant online customer communities, innovation consultancies, innovation exchanges and competitions. But there are many other places where innovation thrives. Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT) in Kagadi, Uganda is one.

URDT: Celebrates Twenty-Two Years of Successful Grass Roots Innovation

Founded in 1987, URDT grew out of the evolving needs of the members of Kagadi, a small rural community in the Kibaale District in western Uganda. The three original founders—Mwalimu Musheshe, Ephrem Rutaboba, and Silvana Franco—came to the district looking for a community whose leaders would be interested in piloting a new form of grass roots community development. The founders believed that getting aid from outside experts was the wrong way for villagers in rural Africa to do development work. Instead, they wanted the local people to create their own home-grown path to prosperity.

The three founders began by facilitating a community action planning session under a mango tree in the small village. The villagers created a list of priorities (clean water, sanitation, more prosperous farms, education and jobs for their children, healthcare, better roads, electricity, etc.) Then they began mobilizing to develop the know-how and to build the capacity to change their circumstances.

Now, 22 years later, the town has 30 businesses, a 100-bed hospital, prosperous farms, and a positive “can do” energy. Electricity has now reached Kagadi town. The roads are improving. (The journey from Kampala used to take two days by car; now it takes five hours.) The town and the surrounding region have become more prosperous. Infant mortality has decreased dramatically, as has domestic violence and corruption.

The Inception of URDT: How Do We Create Lasting Change?

In 1987, URDT founders looked at rural development and asked: “What is wrong with this picture? No change is happening.”

URDT’s original three-person team has grown to a dedicated staff (now about 130 people) on an 80-acre campus that was deeded to them by a grateful local county. The campus is a beehive of activity with three schools, a demonstration farm, a community radio station, a computer and Internet center, social and land rights counseling, a solar technology center, and many other trades being learned and applied. There are typically about 500 people on campus at any time. The students and staff work with community leaders, local farmers, businesspeople, educators, churches, police, courts, and local non-government organizations (NGOs) to develop and deliver education, training, practical know-how, and access to resources to help local people take the necessary actions to improve their lives. URDT has evolved its programs organically over the years, to serve a region that now includes 6 million people in 9 districts.

For 22 years, this grass roots organization has been innovating in the field of integrated rural development. Although not as well known as the Barefoot College^[1] in India or Grameen Bank^[2], the birthplace of micro-credit in Sri Lanka, URDT is a hotbed of innovative, yet pragmatic practices for sustainable rural development.

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**ENDNOTES**

1) The Barefoot College was founded by Bunker Roy in 1972 “with the conviction that solutions to rural problems lie within the community. The College encourages practical knowledge and skills rather than paper qualifications through a learning by doing process of education. The College addresses problems of drinking water, girls’ education, health & sanitation, rural unemployment, income generation, electricity and power, as well as social awareness and the conservation of ecological systems in rural communities. The College serves a population of over 125,000 people both in immediate as well as distant areas. There are now many Barefoot campuses throughout India and in other parts of the world.” From the Barefoot College Web site home page in April, 2009.

2) for a brief history of the Grameen Bank and its beginnings in 1976, please go to: http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=164

**ENDNOTES**