2010

African Programs ReportInvesting in systems for scale

Ap

2Iddrisu Muniru Mustapha, an Agricultural Extension Agent with Ghana’s Ministry of Food & Agri-culture facilitates a workshop to farmers in Taha, Ghana. The workshop, developed by EWB and the Ministry, aims to boost the business acumen and profits of rural farmers. Photo: Robin Stratas/EWB

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The Problem

What we do

We don’t define the problem as the existence of povertyWe define the problem as the persistence of poverty – that so much effort and investment hasn’t accelerated African prosperity sufficiently. There are many promising solutions. What is missing in Africa is organisations that have the capacity to take these solutions to scale.

EWB invests people and ideas into African organisations to improve their capacity to deliver at scale solutions for the rural poor. We also influence the sector to invest more in building effective organisations in Africa.

In doing so, we invest in Canadian and African leaders to strengthen their commitment and ability to bring about positive change.

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PROGRAMS in 2010

Establishing Data-driven District Decision making

Supporting districts to incorporate evidence based decision making primarily focused on the delivery of rural infrastructure, and ad-vocating among donors/government for a strong district voice and better enabling environment.

Improving Waterpoint Functionality

To support the main actors in the water and sanitation sector to reduce the 45% inefficiency in water point siting and functionality; and to help take sanitation promotion to scale.

Getting Farmers ready for Market

To improve the functioning of national level extension / aggregation organisa-tions that help farmers better prepare to engage with the market.

Getting Markets ready for Farmers

To accelerate the growth of Agribusinesses serving smallholders.

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Programs

What’s new in 2010

Expanded model from just sending Canadian volunteers to hiring African leaders to work as EWB staff with our partner organization.

Partners paying for services: Teams grew from 0 to 10% self-funded, and will grow to 35% self funded in 2011.

Brand new funding potential - up to 5M$ of grants in the pipeline from foundations and social investment funds.

EWBers taking own ideas to scale by starting their own companies (five in total); EWB invests people and money, and connects to network, to help succeed.

Vertically connected – all teams work at field, management and connected to donor level.

Multiplication channels

1. Adopted by national body and scaled2. Amount of donor investment influenced3. Donor partner invest in EWB taking idea to

scale4. Crowded-in funds: Donors-Partners inves-

ting in EWB-developed ideas5. Influencing donor/national “enabling envi-

ronment”

2010 Results

1. Three EWB innovations selected and scaled by natio-nal organization.

2. Estimated influence of 13M$ of donor investment3. Pipeline of 5M$ to take approach to scale; first steps

of $110,000 invested in 2010.4. Donors/govt invested 320K in direct EWB innovations.5. Important policy voice with 15 publications, over 4000

views, sitting on 5 exclusive committees.

Program Input metrics

41 full time volunteers & 43 P/T 511 Volunteer months Equivalent to $2,000,000 of donated time.

14 partner organisations, many linked from field to policy level.

17 prototyped/piloted opera-tional-service innovations.

5 innovations at multiplication stage generating significant results.

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Partnered with 50+ leading NGOs in 25 countries around world

150 volunteers

Supporting communities with Technology & Engineering

Volunteer sending and capacity development

HISTORY OF EWB’S Work in Africa

Partnered with communities to solve their problems. Focused on Technology. But...Community level wasn’t where the problems were; local NGOs had context and sustainability.

Became one of top 3 groups in Canada at volunteer sen-ding; superb recruitment, training, low cost operations.. Created great capacity building tools and support for our volunteers.

But…..One-off placement unable to bring about level organisatio-nal change necessary.

“After working with practically every de-velopment sending agency, I have never come across one who provides staff who consistently are as intelligent, quick lear-ning and flexible.”

Former USAID Program Director

“EWB is a highly professional outfit committed to excellence and learning. The most interesting part of the EWB approach is that it is doing more to take capacity development as an objective systematically than any other development organization.” Assessment report by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, former director

of the UN Human Development Report

12 community partners

50 volunteers

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Organisational diagnostic and management support

“The partnership with EWB has been among the most useful relationships in the last decade.”

Country Director, Malawian NGO

“It has been a wonderful thing having Heather here and we have made tremendous progress. She understands me in a way that no “expert” consultant could and therefore enables me to do more than I thought was possible.”

Director of Planning Malawi Water Ministry, Head of SWAp process

Narrowed focus to 4 countries200 volunteers

4 programs areas150 volunteers

$ 300,000 direct investments

Report

Built deep relationships with local implementing organisations.

Helped diagnose and improve their capabilities for M&E, provide the resources to drive new projects, trained/support for field staff, and im-proved management processes.

But…..all partners faced systemic constraints preventing large scale change.

Investing in systems for Scale

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Most donors want projects that “reach” many beneficiaries.

We think 50 years of focusing on the wrong metric led to the wrong work that didn’t address the bigger picture pro-blems.

So we have specifically chosen not to be a direct service delivery organi-zation. We don’t dig wells or design improved irrigation systems.

We don’t think that Africa needs any more “big ideas”. Instead, it needs local organi-sations to continuously adapt and improve on existing ideas. It’s this evolutionary process that allows ideas to scale to new contexts.

So we invest in organizations’ ability to improve how they offer effective services to the rural poor.

This means that we don’t work directly with beneficiaries and we don’t mea-sure the changes we have on them directly.

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0

“Farm

ers reac

hed”

Cumulative “Farmers reached” through development projects: millions

Average African crop yields: Kg/Ha

Million“Reaching” many farmers isn’t helping

We Like Metrics

but Not Over Simplified Metrics

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Report

There is lots of money cominginto development. And there aremore than enough challenges onthe ground that need sustainedpositive change.

But effective organisations totransform these resources andinvestments into sustained outcomes are rare. This is the missing middle.

So we work at the level oforganisations - government, NGOand private sector – to help them improve their operational effectiveness.

We also connect the top andthe bottom. We are groundedin field realities and we areconnected to the policy/ donor environment to help take operations innovations to scale.

This makes finding metrics andattribution harder.

But we think it’s the right problemto solve. And as engineers,we know defining the right problemis the most important step.

Inputs and resources Money, donors, developmental Agen-cies United Nations, Developed Nation Governments, Projects, Policies, etc.

Sustainable Outcomes Farmers, communities, community leaders, microcredit recipients

1.

Missing middle Effective organization, systems and capabilities (within

governments, ministries, business, Small and Me-

dium Enterprises (SMEs), NGOs, cooperatives, etc.

2.

3.

Investing in this “Missing Middle”

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What is an Operational / Service innovation

We typically think of innovation as tangible products. For example, the Green Revolution is frequently described as a combination of new improved seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation.

However, African organisations need innova-tions in their services and operations in order to more effectively take those product innova-tions to scale.

An service innovation might be a rent-to-own program for farmers to access irrigation equipment.

An operational innovation might be an effecti-ve agent network to cost-effectively distribute seeds to isolated villages, or an improved monitoring system to support a network of rural agro-dealers.

These operational and service innovations are what EWB helps our partners to proto-type, pilot, and then scale throughout their organization.

Supply chains, inventory management, scheduling software, Kaizen manufactu-ring, six sigma.”

Credit cards, product guaran-tees, insurance, B2B services.

Examples from the private sector:Productinnovation

Service innovation

Operational innovation

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O/S inovation example

Report

Water and sanititation team Defined problem not as building more water points, but ensuring local organisations (government and private sector) able to reduce the 32% breakdown rate and the 15% bad siting rate to increase functionality of Malawi’s 42,000 waterpoints.

District driven monitoring An excel data base

Team created an excel ba-sed monitoring using health workers to collect data.

1.

Solution: District - Driven waterpoint monitoring system

Allows up-to-date maps to be created‘Only system to be self-replicated and fully-funded by districts themselves.

2.

Organic3.Growth in MalawiNumber of districts

Potential for Ghana...

Results$200,000 worth of repairs through the African Catalytic Growth Fund

$18,000,000 worth of infrastructure installation and rehabilitation funded by the African Development Bank

$500,000 worth of infrastructure and rehabilitations funded by UNICEF

$500,000 worth of rehabilitations and new infrastructure funded by an NGO

4.

2

6

10

18

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2008 20102009 2011 2012

Tanzania& Uganda

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Test multiple operational / service innovation ideas

Refine ideas until they are effective, efficient and credible enough to go to scale

Example:

How Develop?Close interaction with partner front lines & field. How Develop?

Work through multiple levels of partner organisation.

Creation of a database and reporting template to help Ministry of Agriculture staff reduce reporting time by 60% to free up time for farmer interaction.

Use of template/database in 19 districts in Northern Ghana. From last to first in reporting response rate. Ministry invests own funds in training.

1. Prototype 2. Pilot

HOW IT WORKS venture model

Operational or Service Innovation

Refi ne Innovate

Impl

emen

t

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Leverage non-EWB resources to multi-ply solutions through other channelsHow Develop?Through policy/donor level to affect enabling environment & influencing program design. to incorporate operational service innovations.

Database/template adopted by Ministry at national level, rolled out for all 174 districts using Ministry funds.

3. Multiply

Report

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Investment Phase

Prototype Pilot

VENTURE MODEL Tracking Progress and Impact

Key Metrics· Evidence of idea leading to performance increase · Level of interest expressed

by partner organization

Key Metrics· Demonstrated and verifiable results· Link between OSI and beneficiary impact· Partner co-investment · Partner replication without EWB investment

0.5 : 1high person investment required

2-3 : 1 Starting to bring in others investmentsLeverage

factor on EWB investments

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Impact Phase

Leverage existing bodies/resources to take multiply solution impact

Multiply

Report

10-100 : 1Smart use of others ‘ resources creates low cost multiplier

Five channels

1. Adopted by national body and scaled.

2. Amount of donor investment influenced.

3. Donor partner invest in EWB taking idea to scale.

4. Crowded-in funds: Donors-Partners investing in EWB-developed ideas.

5. Influencing donor/national “enabling environment.”

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Improving WaterPoint Functionality

Programs

Reliable access to clean water is crucial. Diarrheal disease fills half of the hospital beds in developing countries, draining budgets, over-loading services.

However, it’s just not just about drilling a well to get clean water.

Of the 45,000 water points throughout Malawi, 32% of them are non-functional at

any given time, and an additional 15% are re-dundantly sited, meaning some communities have many water points while others have none.

While more inves-tment in water supply is needed, it is clear that more efficient investment will be the key to sus-tainable and equitable water supply services at scale.

Shit @ ScaleSimilarly, more latri-

nes reduce disease by 30%.

New approaches to sanitation promotion (Community-Led Total Sanitation) generate nearly 100% coverage rates of latrines in pilot programs, but the district health departments lack the capacity and the effective donor support

to take these solutions to scale.

EWB is also working to help CLTS spread at scale while maintai-ning essential quality elements.

EWB’s focus

Officially lack access

Poorly planned overlap

Broken Effective coverage

32%15%

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Improving WaterPoint functionality

Results of Monitoring tool and system

Real-time waterpoint monitoring tool and system

Supporting districts to scale CLTS to bring improved sanitation to 1M Malawians by 2012.

National Government policies that don’t undermine the private sector and better investments

Finding more affordable repair mo-dels using business principles

Prototype Pilot Multiply

Purpose: To transform a series of actors in the water and sanitation sector to reduce the 40% inefficien-cy in water point siting and functio-nality; and to help organisations offer effective sanitation promotion at scale.

Evidence of progress at Prototype/Pilot level• Growth in districts served from

4 to 13• Testing 4-5 different ideas for

more affordable repair models.• Ministry cited EWB as one of

the top 3 agencies in Malawi working on water and sanita-tion.

• 3 publications in leading journals.

• Ideas cited major aid-reform blogs.

• Partners co-investing $65,000 next year for EWB support.

Used to help gui-de almost 20M$ of infrastructure projects.

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Agriculture

1. Getting farmers ready for markets

EWB is working to transform the functioning of national level extension/aggregating organisations that help farmers better prepare to engage with the market.

National level organisations can be challenging to work in, but have reach. Our typical work is promoting agricul-ture as a business - helping farmers learn the basics of businesses, learning about quality standards, especially for new types of crops. We also help farmers form into groups to engage with markets to have more clout.

This work is primarily in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Table: Farmer Based Organisations – need to change from quantity to quality.

2. Getting markets ready for farmers

EWB is working to accelerate the growth of Agri-businesses serving smallholders.

Agribusinesses – whether selling seeds, offering credit or running outgrower schemes – are critical for raising rural incomes.

Markets are in their infancy after decades of state interventions; markets are difficult to establish with low incomes and low rural population density.In the past 3 years EWB has worked with 20+ business or NGOs offering services to businesses.

This work is in all four EWB focus countries.

Programs

EWB is tackling two related problems

Number of FBOs

Percentage of FBOs Formed

Formed 24,514 100%

Functional 11,162 46%

Accessing Financial and/or Market Information Services

5,309 22%

Accessing Credit 2,283 9%

Successfully Repaying Loans1 1,009 4%

Source: Department of Agriculture Extension Services, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ghana (MoFA 2009 Annual Progress Report).

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Agriculture as a Business (AAB) extension curriculum.

Commercialisation management systems.

CEF improvements in Burkina Faso

Performance Incentives for AEAs in Ghana.

Agriculture college entrepreneurship course.

Management Information System.

Farmer Innovation Challenge.

Prototype Pilot Multiply

Purpose: To improve the functioning of national level extension organisa-tions that help farmers better pre-pare to engage with the market.

Evidence of progress at Prototype/Pilot level:Over 100,000 hours for frontline work in Ghana, over 50,000 in Burkina Faso produced over a dozen different prototypes. EWB worked directly with over 175 frontline staff serving over 250,000 farmers.

Getting Farmers ready for Markets

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Develop new approaches to support agro-dealers.

Creative marketing – Eat Ghana Rice Campaign.

Offer management support to Agri-business to help them engage with small-holders.

Support selective value-chain analysis in Ghana/Burkina Faso.

Engage with leading donors to support the transition from conventional to value-chain approach.

Offer rural farmers a Rent-to-Own scheme.

Prototype Pilot Multiply

Purpose: To accelerate the growth of agribusiness serving small-holder farmers through investments of human and managerial talent to help partners to:• Develop market-oriented

skills throughout the organi-zation, from extension staff to managers;

• Improve management practi-ces, focusing on processes, incentives and motivations, in an African context;

• Design and implement better information-feedback systems so that interventions can be tailored more specifi-cally to local contexts;

Evidence of progress at Prototype/Pilot level:• Worked with 20+ of the

top agribusnesses/market facilitation groups in the past 3 years.

• Very high level of interest among social investment funds to partner with EWB.

• Asked to undertake mid-pro-ject evaluations for partners.

• Partner cost-sharing reached 35% in 2010.

Impact of innovations at multiply level• $50,000 investment in EWB’s “Eat Ghana Rice Campaign” by donor.• Pipeline of investments up to 5M$ for agribusiness support based on growing reputation.• Invitation to present field realities/lessons learned/research with 6 major donors.• Innovation fund suggestions affecting 1M$ of investment .• Produced 8 tools used to help organisations assess staff capacity, improve M/E, etc.

Getting Markets Ready for Farmers

Programs

EWBspinoff

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Data Driven District Decision-making

Data Driven District Decision-making

There are two pilots which have proven successful at the district level and which we would like to expand to scale nationally. They are the tools and processes for developing an improved indicator databank and a project implementation tracking database.The centralized district indi-cator databank is sampled to the right.

Decentralized dis-

trict systems in the

Northern Region of

Ghana are ineffec-

tive at generating

evidence-based and

transparent develop-

ment plans resulting

in inefficient and

ineffective service

delivery to rural

communities. EWB

is helping to accele-

rate the move:

Donor driven development

Donors influence plans which districts

follow; local politicians change priorities

at will

District Driven Development,

in which districts have

Strong District Leadership

District leaders are pro-active in assigning roles,

motivating staff, and taking responsibility for

implementing plans.

Transparent District Planning

The planning process is transparent and com-

munities hold the district accountable for imple-

menting the plans.

Evidence-Based District PlanningDistrict Plans uti-lize accurate data

for evidence-based decision-making.

EWB developed the processes to gather the data in common formats and to consolidate it in excel. We then developed ma-cros and used visual basic to make it easy for planners to see district trends graphically and geographi-cally.

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Data Driven District Decision-making

Programs

District indicator database – tool and system

District project monitoring database – tool and system

Database management training program for civil servants

Learning Exchange to enhance management capacities of district leaders

National government policy changes that enable evidence-based district systems

Prototype Pilot Multiply

Purpose: To ensure that districts have the ability and that donors/the Gover-nment provides the incentives for greater evidence based decisions at the district level that benefit the rural poor.

Evidence of progress at Proto-type/Pilot level:• 50% self-funded – evidence

of partner valuing work• Very high district buy-

in – district directors will continue projects using own discretionary budget.

• Districts where we work among top 5-20% in national government rankings

• Over-subscription to EWB learning exchange programs

• Tools used to site hundreds of infrastructure projects.

Impact of innovations at multiply level:• EWB database management

training program selected for a nation-wide program in all 170 districts in Ghana.

• EWB invited to present at major donor/government events.

• EWB only NGO invited to be on national monitoring and evaluation steering commit-tee.

• 2000 views of 9 “district reali-ty” papers for donors.

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Failure ReportReporting our failures in 2010

EWB’s 2010 Failure Report openly shares and analyzes mistakes across our programs. ewb.ca/publications

FrWe began by saying we like

metrics, just not oversimplified metrics.

In this report we have attemp-ted to balance the complexity of our problem definition with need for common metrics to explain and manage our programs.

We hope that this balance is good. And more importantly, we hope that both improve in next year’s report.

In the private sector, the mar-ket punishes mistakes and orga-nisations learn. In development, mistakes are rarely admitted. We

try to be on the cutting edge of reversing that trend. That is why we are proud of our annual failure report. It is the tip of the iceberg of EWB’s culture of seeking out our failures to learn from them and to improve.

Most importantly, we thank our volunteers and staff who, put up with this challenge of unders-tanding complexity while taking action. And we thank our partners and all the frontline workers who are striving to bring about positive change.

Closing

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When ideas become spinoffs Some EWB entrepreneurs will decide that they would like to take their own idea to scale rather than scale through existing organisations.

EWB provides support to the-se entrepreneurs with access to our networks/credibility; cash investments, or people investments.

· One of Zambia’s fastest growing companies· Mobile payment systems

· Focusing on payments to farmers· Working to offer vouchers for government

schemes to reduce corruption· Potential to help farmers change saving patterns

· EWB supported with 3 volunteers; currently CEO is EWB alumni,

and 3 EWB alumni working there.

· Started by EWB staff member· Offers capital equipment to rural farmers;

12 month repayment scheme· Because asset produces income,

95% repayment rate· Grown in 15 months to 100,000$

in equipment leased· 9 staff

· EWB supported with 50,000$ cash and access to Canadian networks

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366 Adelaide Street West Suite 601Toronto, Ontario M5V 1R9 CANADA

Telephone: 1.416.481.3696Toll Free: 1.866.481.3696Fax: 416.352.5360Email: info@ewb.ca

Charitable Registration Number: 89980-1815-RR0001

Get the whole picture. Detailed program reports are available at:

www.ewb.ca/publications

www.ewb.ca

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