Should we go #LeanStartup, Mr Governor?
Or how to bring validated learning methods in city management
An overwhelming waste management issue
Niamey, the capital city of Niger (which is different from Nigeria by the way) is currently facing dramatic waste management challenges. With a fast growing population estimated at 2 millions inhabitants, the city produces an astonishing estimated 365 000 tons of solid waste per year. In a recent interview (Sahel Dimanche September 2, 2016, P14), the Governor of Niamey mentioned the following:
…The Mayor has repeatedly made punch operations to clear the waste littering the streets . These are costly operations. Alas, he faces uncivil people who sometimes do not even pay their taxes, who produce a lot of garbage and throw them in non indicated places. You see, where the City Council invested in waste containers, people prefer to throw them on the ground, while the City Council has even created platforms for the convenience these people. Go to see the boulevard Askia Mohamed , the garbage on the floor and the containers are empty.
The situation he is referring to is captured in the following pictures .
To his point, it is an general observation that most people just throw their trash and waste all over the streets, with no particular discipline, even when the infrastructure exists. However, the users we are talking about are these (see below), and realistically, the way the containers are designed and positioned does not encourage, and sometimes physically allow, to put the trash in. In their rush, they simply throw them away on the floor an run.
A different paradigm: the validated learning process
The validated learning process, pillar of the lean startup methodology, helps reduce the biggest risk when undertaking a project: offering a product or solution that no one wants. In a nutshell, it consists of the following (source: Harvard Business School, Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship: The Lean Startup, Note 9–812–095)
- Develop a Vision
- Translate the Vision into Hypotheses
- Specify Minimum Viable Products — MVP Tests
- Prioritize Tests
- Learn from MVP Tests
- Persevere, Pivot, or Perish
- Scaling and Ongoing Optimization
The key lesson here is to learn fast with the feedback received from users, and to keep resources to their minimum.
Application to the Niamey Waste management issue
There is clearly no one solution to this daunting challenge, but in our view, the validated learning approach can help solve the problem in a more cost effective way. Here is one way to do that: before deploying all these containers and investing in these heavy platforms for several millions of USD, few pilot sites, two or three could have been chosen, construct the platforms with laterite (cheap durable red clay found locally), and observe the behavior of the users. Our estimations determined that each of these MVPs could have been done for less than 500 USD. It would have been quickly identified, for instance, that the way the platform is designed makes it extremely difficult for someone pushing an already filled wheelbarrow to climb the hill, empty the waste, then going down the other way with the barrow empty. Maybe the other way around would have had more success? Going down the hill when the barrow is filled and up when it’s empty…; Anyways, testing various hypotheses would have been extremely cheap compared to the millions invested in building these unused infrastructures.
The way forward
As we’ve seen it, the validated learning model can be an extremely powerful way to approach problem solving or project management, by learning faster through the process, and saving resources all along. In the case of Niamey’s waste management infrastructure, it would have help identify the risk of failure in advance. And the more limited the available resources, the more I would say, one should be keen to adopt the validated learning process.
In that regard, as number one in the world in limited resources, Niger’s public administration would definitely win by adopting this approach, and Niamey can lead the way if Mr. Governor is willing to give the tone from the top.
