Introducing our first ever free book offer!

As part of our ongoing efforts to inspire innovators-to-be the world over, and in celebration of the impending arrival of Spring (!) we’re offering the Amazon Kindle version of The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator free of charge until the end of March, or with a whopping 40% discount on the paperback edition when ordered through the UK publisher’s website.Despite the tens of billions spent each year in international aid, some of the most promising and exciting social innovations and businesses have come about by chance. Many of the people behind them did not consciously set out to solve anything, but they did. Welcome to the world of the reluctant innovator.

The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator comes with endorsements from the likes of MIT, National Geographic, the BBC and Nobel Peace Prize-winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who also provides the Foreword. Shortly after publication it hit top spot in the Development Studies category on Amazon and has received over forty 5-star reviews across all Amazon sites (24 are available on Amazon.com).



These offers end on 31st March so be quick! And remember to share on your own social media if you know others who might appreciate the heads-up.

Get the Kindle version for free on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Reluctant-Innovator-Ken-Banks-ebook/dp/B00MX0ZWW6/

Get the paperback edition with a 40% discount from the publisher:
https://www.nbninternational.com/checkout?isbn1=9781907994180&copies1=1&pub=158&promocode=LPP40BANKS


Happy reading and sharing, and if you feel sufficiently inspired all we ask is that you share a review on Amazon to help raise awareness among other like-minded innovators. Thank you!

Announcing our Four-Part Manifesto for Change

For almost fifteen years kiwanja.net has been home for our hopes, dreams and frustrations on all things technology, social innovation, and international conservation and development. During that time we’ve widely travelled, spoken, published, built, consulted, mentored and despaired. It’s been an incredible journey that started in early 2003 on the fringes of Kruger National Park, and we’ve had plenty of opportunities to see what does and what doesn’t work along the way. Crucially, we’ve stayed small and independent over that time, allowing us to remain honest and challenging when and where we need to be.


Where it all began. Early mobile phone research in Bushbuckridge, South Africa. Photo: Ken Banks

One of our earlier, seminal posts from 2009 – “Time to eat our own dog food?” – challenged the sector to not waste the opportunity that mobile phones gave us, asking:

Is the future of social mobile an empowered few, or an empowered many? Mobile tools in the hands of the masses presents great opportunity for NGO-led social change, but is that the future we’re creating?

Sadly, much of the same argument outlined in that post can be applied today, placing something of a question mark over what progress we’ve made. We know, for example, that many projects still rarely optimise for their beneficiaries and the environments in which they operate, and despite what they often claim, many set out as solutions looking for a problem. Too many initiatives still lead with technology, and fail to scale into sustainable programs – in part because donors are constantly under pressure to disburse funds to new and ‘innovative’ projects, rarely giving older projects time to mature.

There is still no minimum standard for funding development projects, either. As a result, money struggles to find it’s way to the projects most likely to succeed, and a vicious cycle ensues. Worse still, despite talk of local capacity building and ownership, the vast majority of programs are still conceptualised, executed and funded by outsiders and parachuted in.

And to top it all, as a sector we still lack a shared vision of the future we all should be working towards. All of this adds up to a cycle of underperformance, perpetuated by the fact that feedback loops between donors, practitioners, policy makers, academia, civil society and program beneficiaries remain at best weak.

We can, and should, be better than this.

One thing I’m particularly proud of is that we’ve offered solutions when we’ve identified problems over the years. It’s far too easy to rant about how rubbish everything is, and it goes without saying it’s much harder, yet undoubtedly more productive, to offer ways forward. Over the past few years in particular, many of those bigger ideas have sufficiently matured to allow us to today launch our new Four-Part Manifesto for Change.

This new Manifesto focuses on four areas in particular that we feel need positive disruption in our field.

PAINTING A SHARED, FUTURE VISION
Working closely with innovators and entrepreneurs from the places where the problems exist, we propose the creation of a new policy paper that helps us achieve a future where local innovators and local innovations drive the development agenda. You can download a summary PDF of that proposal here.

A NEW CODE OF CONDUCT FOR DONORS
We believe that donors are in an ideal position to stem the flow of poorly thought-out or inadequately planned technology-for-development projects and propose the adoption of a Charter to put things right. You can read about that here.

SERIOUSLY GET BEHIND OUR TOP TALENT
Offering long-term support to some of our top talent would increase the chances of them – and us – having a positive global impact. We focus too much on projects and not the people who drive them. You can read our thoughts on a new Global Fellowship Programme here.

TIME TO ANSWER THE BIG QUESTION
Do international development projects designed and managed at grassroots level perform better than those managed from the outside? The debate rages, so we propose a development challenge to help us find the answer. You can read more about how that might work here.

To reach our full potential, and to alleviate as much suffering on the planet as possible, we need to be bold, embrace appropriate innovation and be open to disruption in our own sector, not just others. We need to face up to our problems, failures and inefficiencies, and be brave in seeking new solutions when things go wrong. Our Manifesto offers four new solutions to four of those long-standing problems.

We hope this might be the start of a wider, bolder conversation where we begin putting into action projects and programmes that put the needs of the people we seek to help before those of ourselves or our organisations – however uncomfortable that may be.

You can read more on our Manifesto at hackingdevelopment.org

An app. For my children.

It’s no secret to readers of this blog that for a while now I’ve been attempting to get back into coding. This, combined with a growing interest in building sustainability into many of my projects, has fuelled my interest in the potential of mobile apps to build out some of my ideas.

Today sees the launch of my first experimental app. While I didn’t write the code it’s been a useful exercise in understanding the process of app design, app development, testing and publishing. Hopefully the coding piece will fall into place in the new year.

There’s nothing better than scratching your own itch, so my first app does just that. Say hello to for my children.


2xwebsite-screenshot-page


for my children is a simple app I wish my mother had before she died. It would have let her share those places that were special in her life. Her first school. First home. Favourite cafe. First job. The place she met my father. The old playground she played in as a child – which is now a block of flats. Places I would love to visit and stand today if I only knew where they were.

for my children effectively lets you create your own memory book of special places so your friends, your family, your children – and their children – can one day walk in your footsteps and revisit them. I know it’s something I want to use, and hope you feel the same.

I can also imagine this being useful for early-stage dementia or Alzheimer’s sufferers, helping them capture memories for family while they still can.

It’s only available in the Apple App Store at the moment but we’re planning on building out an Android version soon assuming we generate the income. The online sharing functionality will also come later, budgets permitting. If you like the app and think others might too, please share on your social media and your blog. And if you download it, consider rating it in the App Store. Good ratings will be vital if we’re to develop the idea further. Thank you.

Links
Official website
In the App Store
Information sheet (PDF)
Screenshots (JPG)
App splash screen (JPG)

Video: Time to pay attention

You shouldn’t need anyone to tell you that there were refugees long before the Syrian crisis brought their horror further into the public consciousness.

There was famine before recent announcements of severe food shortages in Yemen, Malawi and Nigeria, too. And, today, with over fifty countries run by dictatorships, oppression isn’t in short supply, either.

As heartening as it is to see the public response to the latest humanitarian crisis or injustice, it’s a shame that in so many cases it takes a major news event to bring a particular concept of suffering to people’s attention. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people were always paying attention, always aware of the inequalities in the world, and always willing to help chip away at it, wherever it may be? How many of these events might never have happened if we all paid more attention and supported those working to fix their root causes? In today’s always on, always connected, 24/7 news world, there’s no excuse to not know what’s going on in the lives of people less fortunate.

In a recent side project we launched Everyday Problems, a new site designed to raise awareness of problems faced by people on the planet each and every day, and to help people think about how they might be able to better engage in solutions. We also gave a one-off talk about the project at a recent TEDx event in Munich which you can watch above (and via the main Video menu).