Lending capacity to the tech community through MAVC

Making All Voices Count was a global initiative that supported innovation, scaling-up, and research to deepen existing innovations and help harness new technologies to enable citizen engagement and open, responsive government. The initiative, which was active in 12 countries in Africa and Asia, supported creative and cutting-edge solutions—many of which leverage mobile and web technology—to the challenge of amplifying citizen voices and enabling governments to listen and to respond.

MAVC, which was implemented from June 2013 to November 2017, was launched as a Grand Challenge for International Development and was supported by the Department for International Development (DFID), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Open Society Foundations (OSF) and Omidyar Network (ON).

The aim of MAVC was a substantial push towards effective democratic governance and accountability with the belief that open government depends on closing the feedback loop between citizens and government—by creating:

Tools to enable citizens to give feedback on government performance,

Stronger incentives for, and greater capacity within, governments to respond to citizens' feedback, and

Incentives and the capacity for citizens to engage with government to improve their policies and services.

A consortium of three partners implemented  MAVC:

Hivos (consortium lead): An international development organization working in 26 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America to support people in who are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities and resources;

Institute for Development Studies (IDS): A leading global institution for development research, teaching and learning, and impact and communications, based at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom; and

Ushahidi: One of the pioneering technology-for-development organizations, providing open source tools for interactive mapping and real-time crowdsourcing of information deployed in 150 countries since 2008.

Ushahidi was primarily responsible for designing and implementing three MAVC components: innovation grants (through competitive and collaborative arms), capacity development, and the  South-to-South lab. These three components were conceived as an integrated approach to achieve overall objectives as follows:

To create, support, and grow the technology ecosystem in 12 countries in order for more innovative technology tools to be built for citizens to interact with government, and to generally increase tech adoption within each country and

To create a government engagement strategy that incentivizes government agencies to open their data, become more efficient, and better connect with the citizens of that country.

Ushahidi began the design and implementation of the South-to-South Lab (STS) activities in Year 2 of MAVC with the goals of convening the network, providing virtual and physical spaces for grantees, and stimulating knowledge acquisition and application through events. The South-to-South Lab also played a role in brokering interventions, building relationships, and partnerships, and expanded its scope in Year 4 to support peer learning at an in-country level.

The South-to-South Lab was funded through MAVC and was set up with the task to identify and manage a pool of mentors and fellows and then to match them to grantees based on their needs. The period of the mentorship programme which usually lasted three months or less, and fellowships,were either embedded with funded partners (tech hubs or other innovation grantees) or with government to support the work of champions who were identified as committed to governance and accountability.

Mentoring was delivered across the 12 MAVC focus countries, with the highest number of interventions in Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, and Pakistan. The most frequently provided support by mentors was in gender equity and inclusivity followed by technology and development and stakeholder engagement while the most frequent type of support provided by fellows was in business and sustainability, followed by technology and development.

FIGURE 1: TYPE OF SUPPORT PROVIDED BY MENTORS

It is interesting to note that the survey showed that mentees thought that country context mattered more than mentors did. In an Ushahidi-administered survey, when mentors were asked what factors most influenced how they delivered assistance, they cited socioeconomic and environmental factors as more important than other more, country-specific factors.

FIGURE 2: DID ANY OF THE FOLLOWING FACTORS INFLUENCE YOUR ABILITY TO APPLY WHAT YOU LEARNED?

The South to South  Lab also coordinated the fellowship component, which was a key part of MAVC’s government engagement strategy. The fellowship component was designed to increase the efficiency, productivity, and innovation orientation of government host organizations. Also, fellows’ actions were designed to address the identified problem as well to introduce innovative approaches towards providing solutions. Learning was designed to be two-way between the organization and the fellow.

FIGURE 3: FELLOWSHIP PLACEMENTS BY COUNTRY

FIGURE 4: TYPE OF SUPPORT PROVIDED BY FELLOWS

Furthermore, survey results showed that 91% of respondents said that the mentorship made a difference to their projects, and the majority of mentees said that on a scale of 1 to 5, their confidence (53%) and motivation (52%) both improve greatly (4 or 5), although Africa-based mentees gave higher ratings than their Asia-based counterparts.

FIGURE 5: TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE MENTORSHIP IMPACT YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL?

Overall, offering capacity development  to tech innovation programmes was found to provide mentees with the opportunity to increase their knowledge, enhance their skills in various areas. Beneficiaries were also able to enhance their connectivity by forming communities of practise and sharing knowledge across different programme stakeholders.  Additionally, the South to South Lab-created physical and virtual spaces that enabled MAVC grantees, to exchange knowledge across different countries and to learn from each other. In conclusion , our findings strongly suggest that Ushahidi’s activities through the capacity development programme of MAVC, enabled Mentees, grantees, Tech Hubs and the administrators of the MAVC programme to improve/modify their actions and to become more effective in their specific initiatives.