After 15 years of the millennium development goals (MDGs), a new era in global development is almost here. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are set to take over and with them comes a call for a more inclusive approach to development design.
The SDGs arrive at an interesting time. New innovations in technology are not only revolutionising how we communicate, they are also forcing us to redefine how citizens engage with the structures that govern their lives.
Before us is a unique opportunity to leverage this sea change and reverse a long-standing bias, that those at the bottom of the development pyramid can only be rescued by solutions from those at the top.
From my experience working to connect poor people to decision makers here are five ways to ensure that all voices are heard in the post-2015 era:
1. Take the conversation to the people
As civil society organisations and citizen-led movements become more visible, it makes sense that the microphone be passed to them. Development conversations need to start at ‘the last mile’, not end there.
Across the African continent, communities are actively engaged with grassroots civil society organisations (CSOs) they trust to have their interests at heart. Local civil society organisations and individuals in west Africa have, for example, been credited with helping the fight against Ebola. They were first to respond and continue to address their communities’ needs. How much faster would they have been responded if development organisations actively engaged them first?
Africa’s large segment of young people are coming of age in a time of social media and are accelerating the adoption of mobile-first lifestyles. They are shifting the conversation from analogue and local to digital and “glocal” - local conversations broadcast globally via digital media.
Conversations are fast moving from under mango trees and community halls to global platforms like Facebook, Twitter, email lists and blogs. There are now more channels of communication available to reach people than there were at the start of the MDGs. It is important that they not be wasted by preaching from the top, but actively used to listen to the voices at the bottom.
2. Use technology to bridge the gap
300 million Africans now have access to the internet and by the end of 2015 there will be almost a billion mobile subscriptions on the continent. Never before has development had this much opportunity to reach and engage so many voices. A whole industry – information communication technology for development (ICT4D) – is attempting to leverage new technologies to, among other things, engage civil society. For all the promise that ICTs hold, they are not solutions in and of themselves but deployed smartly, technology can be transformational.
For example, radio remains the best medium (pdf) to reach the most people in Africa but its limitation has always been that it’s designed for broadcast, not conversation. However, when you combine radio with the responsiveness of mobile phones, you have a mechanism for feedback. Radio programmes can engage callers in educational programming, launch surveys or assist in mapping critical health outbreaks.
Indeed texting has proven a useful means of distributing and collecting data. The Ushahidi platform – launched at the height of Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence – used crowdsourced texts from witnesses to map and inform the public on where the violence was. This versatile platform has proven itself as a powerful tool for citizen engagement on all things from election monitoring to earthquake response.
More mobile solutions are being built to bridge the gap between feature phones and smart phones. Facebook Zero allows users with cheap feature phones to access the world’s largest social network. At least once a month I get a friend request from someone in my village in Masindi, Uganda. While we can’t expect every village to join a development webcast, there simply isn’t a reason why their input shouldn’t be collectable and considered at the meetings.
3. Create new tools to access open data
The democratisation of communication tools has naturally led to a push to democratise other areas of society, notably access to data held by various institutions. The open data movement has seen organisations from the World Bank to African governments opening up their data to anyone who can make use of it. But throwing reams of data at the masses isn’t a complete solution. That data has to be reformatted, and presented in an accessible way for the data-illiterate public.
To this end, the World Bank asked young developers to create applications that would make use of it its datasets in its 2010 Apps4Dev competition. Many of the young developers that participated are among the technologists at nearly 40 tech hubs in Africa, building tools and apps that are closing the gap in citizen engagement.
Kenya’s Mzalendo is gaining momentum as an online site that “seeks to promote greater public voice and enhance public participation in politics by providing relevant information about the national assembly and senate’s activities”. Nigeria’s BudgIT app was a result of a 48-hour hackathon at the Co-creation Hub. Its simple mission was to “redefine participatory governance” by breaking down the national budget into digestible, shareable chunks of information. These are just two of the many engagement tools being built.
4. Embrace shifting trends
The UN’s launch of the online MyWorld 2015 app is a signal that the development elite are paying attention to shifting engagement trends. The UN is embracing a collective approach to decision-making by creating a listening platform that anyone with connectivity can access and provide feedback on the most important issues in their community. It is the hope that the feedback collected will inform the decision-making leading up to the adoption of the SDGs in September.
5. Above all else, engage
All the tools, trends, and platforms are useless if a cultural shift doesn’t happen within international development organisations. More have to be open to public engagement and outside input. Development’s elite have to be willing to accept that the wisdom of the masses is an important ingredient to informed decision-making.
The success of a post-2015 development agenda will depend on how well we all communicate. The launch of Action/2015 is a reminder that everyone’s voice, from average citizens to local policymakers and UN delegates is important to achieving our development goals beyond 2015. As a famous African proverb states: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Teddy Ruge is the co-founder of Hive Colab, an innovation hub in Kampala, Uganda. Follow @tmsruge on Twitter.
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