www.ranlab.org

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ResilientAfrica Network (RAN)

• www.ranlab.org

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Objectives of RAN

• Objective (1) Design resilience framework for
  Sub-Saharan Africa
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• Objective (2) Strengthen resilience of
  communities through innovations
• Objective (3) Enhance resilience-related
  knowledge generation and sharing

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RAN definition ofResilience

• 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 well-being.

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RANs resilience framework
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4 RILabs, 6 Resilience Themes

• RANs 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

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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

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Engagement of students, faculty and stakeholders

• RAN has started intense engagement of faculty and
  students at Central level and regional levels

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Generating the evidence base to inform innovations

• A massive data collection drive launched across
  Africa to develop a solid evidence base for RANs
  innovations agenda
• Starting with qualitative data collection on the
  communitys understanding of resilience, what
  makes them resilient and indigenous adaptation

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RANs 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
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Understanding the university environments

• Understanding the environment in partner
  universities is crucial to understanding their
  role in resilience programming

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RANs innovation pipeline
Evidence Qualitative Quantitative
From pathways to solutions Design
thinking Human-centred design Rapid prototyping
Resilience Innovation Testing Scaling
P1
S1
Intervention 1
Dimension 1
Develop through a resilience lens
More resilient communities
P2
S2
Thematic priority
Dimension 2
P3
S3
Intervention 2
P4
S4
EVALUATION
Dimension 3
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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

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At the centre of RANs interventions

• The community
• 18 test communities across Africa

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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

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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

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RAN Team

• 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
• ME 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 Ayo-Yusuf
• WA RILab Team led by Mr. Denis Chirawurah