The role of technology and new thinking in the development sector is critical to our future. But how do those who are at the front line of implementing and integrating these new ideas feel coming into 2024? We asked three leaders from technology, innovative, and strategy organizations their thoughts on the year ahead.
Read on to hear from:
- Carlyn (“Carly”) James, Director, Practice & Innovation, ThinkPlace Global Development
- Sarah Mak, CEO and Co-Founder, Folktale
- David Roach, CEO, Catalpa
1. Reflections on 2023, what were the most significant developments or challenges in the global development sector?
Filled with significant change 2023 was a big year. For Sarah, while big events dominate our headlines, there is more recognition of the power of stories. “Stories enable profound connection, empathy, and humanity, bridging worlds and making our sector more relatable and accessible to people from all walks of life.”
David highlighted the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for accelerated digital transformation, stressing the importance of digital readiness in times of crisis. David emphasized the evolution of digital development as well as the sector’s capacity to engage in design thinking and innovation more broadly. “Our understanding of digital has changed. It is moving to be a more integrated component of program design and implementation, rather than a focus on the technology itself.”
Integration of ideas featured for Carly as well, who remarked on the trend towards consolidating design, implementation, and measurement in programs, requiring a homogenous (and hard to innovate) approach. Reflecting a shift in how development programs are conceived and executed Carly noted, “We’re seeing a big trend toward wanting the whole kit and caboodle – cost-competitive design, implementation, and measurement capability all under the same roof“.
2. Key Ideas for 2024, what do you believe should be the primary focus areas for the global development sector in the coming year, and why are they crucial?
“There is immense opportunity for digital innovation in areas like labour mobility, enhancing workforce participation, focusing on future-ready skills, increasing transparency and social accountability and enhancing front-line service delivery.” says David. “So for 2024 a key idea for the sector is to embrace the disruption, to “examine how we work, shift our mindset, and incorporate digital from the start as a tool for development effectiveness and outcomes. And, we need to finally deal with our biases and skepticism – digital is not going away.”
Carly discussed the challenges in localization, emphasizing the need to build local capability and partnerships. She clarified that UN agencies often allocate a lot of funds to working within local communities without acknowledging the time or budget required to foster meaningful, non-transactional partnerships with grassroots organizations that share similar principles.
Carly also emphasized the imperative nature of building local capability in cosmopolitan regions which would only be beneficial due to the amount of diversity that exists currently, however, she also noted that establishing trust and partnerships is a gradual endeavor, it cannot merely be distilled into a sequence of transactions;
“We have to go out and form these Partnerships, which is great. I mean that’s the way that we should be working particularly in the Asia Pacific region because of the multitude of languages and cultures.”
“…but it takes time to build trust…it can’t just be a transactional thing. You’re not just hiring someone to be an enumerator or translator, you’re inviting them to be an extension of your own value set and way of working.”
Sarah stressed the importance of community voices shaping global outcomes through video storytelling which promotes global integration. She also propounded on the potency of video storytelling in particular as a focal point of focus; “With video storytelling, data transforms from sterile, detached numbers into living, breathing stories. Video captures the richness, complexity, and emotional depth of experiences in ways that a spreadsheet or report simply cannot.”
3. Technology, Innovation, and Transformation, What trends do you see in terms of innovative thinking in the development sector in 2024? Do you see technology playing more (or less) of a role in development in 2024?
In terms of technology and innovation, Sarah highlighted the importance of maintaining a pragmatic perspective, seeing technology as a supporting element.
She expressed her sentiment that we should steer clear of the danger of proposing solutions that fail to tackle our fundamental issues. We must also recognize that technology is meant to play a supplementary role, instead of being the central element.
“While technology plays a critical supporting role to the work we do, so much of the work begins in gaining a deep understanding and context of the problem space.”
David observed that “Digital has really shifted from an emerging trend to a fundamental component of development practice”. He emphasized this point by explaining the blended nature of digital development “The fundamental question for us as development professionals is ‘how do we use digital to solve persistent and complex development challenges?’ We need a shift in mind-set and it starts with asking the right questions. I would love to hear more questions like ‘how might we utilise digital technology to increase workforce labor participation for the Pacific without people needing to relocate? or how might we get ahead of digitisation and its potential to entrench harmful gender norms in the Pacific, by investing in digital skills and career pathways for women and girls.”
Carly shared her belief that machine learning should be employed to improve our process of generating ideas, navigating persistent problems, and producing images that are novel to the world. Nonetheless, her experiences with clients have made her aware of their concerns regarding major ethical dilemmas associated with AI and machine learning. She also claimed that they will be looking into helping their clients navigate that area a little bit more.
“We might use, let’s say machine learning, to enhance our ideation processes or help us mitigate consent or confidentiality issues if we can kind of create images that are new to the world.” “the thing we’re hearing most from clients is they perceive it as just being riddled with risk.” “so this is a service area that we’re sort of looking into is how to help clients navigate that a little bit more because right now I think everyone’s just feeling a bit paralyzed by it.”
Carly also mentioned the increasing diversity of players in the sector, including family foundations and high-net-worth individuals with specific philanthropic goals.
4. Localisation, How will the discussion move to action this year in localisation?
Localization remains a critical topic for 2024. Carly noted the raised expectations around building local capability and partnerships, despite the challenges in defining localization.
Carly recapitulated the fact that localization is heavily dependent on trust and also stated that everybody talks about localization but nobody really comprehends exactly what it entails, “everyone talks about localization. No one really holds the singular roadmap for it. We are completely aligned to the priorities and the agenda and the philosophy of it, but everyone’s got their own way of approaching it. At ThinkPlace, we are prioritising the long-view…we want to support local capability in a genuinely committed way.”
David emphasized that locally-led development is not just a practice but a structural change, development organizations and donors need to take concrete steps to prioritise local leadership. “Since our inception as an organisation, we have prioritised local-leadership, and participatory design practices like co-design, to shift expertise and agency to partners. We see these practices as fundamental and critical to development effectiveness. But I am keenly aware that localization is more than a development practice question. It is a call to all development organisations to do more than we might find comfortable, pushing us to rethink our roles and to look beyond our own self interest”.
Regarding localization, Sarah advocated for empowering individuals and valuing the knowledge that local communities possess about their solutions via video storytelling.
“Video storytelling enables this shift by putting the power to inform and influence in the hands of those directly affected by development initiatives.”
5. Personal Aspirations – what are your goals for 2024, and what role do you aim to play in achieving these goals?
Sarah shared her personal goal of designing a balanced, engaged life with her family while contributing to global development through technology and storytelling.
“We started our 2024 goals by moving our family from Brisbane to Canberra. As an entrepreneurial couple, my husband (and co-founder at Folktale) and I made this decision based on a desire to be more balanced, present, and engaged with home and work life.”
David has maintained his ambitions and objectives consistently since founding Catalpa with a $5,000 grant, to successfully building an organization that has implemented programs in more than 27 countries.
“My personal goal remains, to shift our sector’s understanding of the potential of design thinking and digital and to use them as a tool for amplifying impact. There is so much potential, and in many ways, we still haven’t scratched the surface.”
Carly highlighted the fact that the landscape of actors and funding streams in international development is more diverse than ever before. Her aspirations include supporting development organisations to better achieve their goals – more efficiently, with the right tools, and with more fit-for-purpose organisational structures and culture. Helping “future-proof” development organisations – especially to enhance their self-sustainability amidst funding restrictions and greater scrutiny – is a personal goal of hers. In addition to that, ThinkPlace re-evaluating how they work with the government as a key player in implementing tailored interventions. They are looking at inventing new ways of cooperation and ‘smarter’ collaboration mainly within the UN framework.
“So I think what we would like to do is really just kind of re-evaluate that, recalibrate and find new ways of working in partnership with government. They are not just one stakeholder among many, they are a critically important stakeholder who will usher the interventions we design into reality.”
6. Hope for 2024, What are you most excited for in 2024 in Global Development?
Optimistically, for 2024, Sarah is enthusiastic about the development sector embracing more inclusive and participatory approaches to engaging with the communities it supports.
“the broader development sector will continue to make strides towards programs adopting more inclusive and participatory models of working with the communities they serve.”
David envisions digital technology integrated into program design, emphasizing its potential to enable positive change. “I would like to see digital integrated more into program designs from the beginning” David also added that we need to fully understand the potential of digital or risk missing a world of opportunities: “If our views on what is possible is constrained by what has already been achieved, or without understanding the potential, we are missing a world of possibilities”
In 2024, Carly hopes to work with international development organisations to look inward and make sure that the design of their organisations, their culture and their leadership will reflect the most effective and efficient way to achieve their goals. “A lot of funding is moving through these organisations to do incredibly impactful work, and we love being a part of that system, but we also see opportunity in helping drive the ‘international development organisation of the future.’” While collaboration and purposeful leadership are such important themes in development, Carly noted, they are skillsets that are often overlooked or taken for granted. Carly is optimistic about seeing innovation in completely new arenas, such as within organisations and teams themselves, so that they can do what they do, even better.