From in-country to in-your-living-room… 5 things we learned taking Frontier Tech Futures online
We originally conceived Futures as a highly interactive group experience where DFID colleagues explore what’s possible with tech in development. The disruption caused by COVID-19 gave us the opportunity to reimagine how we could deliver a similar experience to country offices without being able to be there in person. Here’s what we found.
Futures is a programme from the Frontier Technology Hub that aims to develop DFID in-country office staff’s knowledge, confidence and skills to use frontier technologies like drones, 3D printers and blockchain to deliver development objectives. It’s built on the concept of exploring ideas together without any predetermined answers, learning from multiple perspectives and hearing from technologists working on the ground who have tangible and relevant experiences to share.
We were planning to have our 5th Futures engagement in May in Nigeria (following on from Tanzania, Central Asia, India and Rwanda) when the massive disruption to development work and international travel caused by COVID-19 paused those plans.
Of course, we know that technology has a massive role to play in times of change. COVID-19 has created a multitude of challenges that were unforeseen and underprepared for. We decided to adapt the Futures concept to the new circumstances and head online with the emerging question:
In the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, how might frontier technologies like drones, AI and tele-health solutions help DFID with its response?
We began to work with DFID’s West Africa Research & Innovation Regional Hub, part of the Research and Evidence Division, to co-create a Futures agenda that spoke to this pertinent question. With global work, it’s easy to zoom out to a point where any conversation is too broad and not relevant to highly specific local contexts. With this in mind, a priority was to ensure we kept any content highly context-relevant for a West African audience, while experimenting with the magic of Futures in a virtual setting.
Based on what we heard from West Africa colleagues on the main questions and challenges they were facing, we rapidly created an agenda, and had our first session on 19 May 2020. To cater for different learning styles and levels of confidence and fluency in frontier technologies, we made sure to keep the sessions varied in terms of content and interactivity.
Each session brought invaluable insights for how we can improve our offering of Futures.
- Whilst COVID-19 is front-of-mind, the role of tech beyond the pandemic is equally relevant
We started with the assumption that participants would be most interested in learning about technology used to address COVID-related challenges. That’s why we designed the agenda with the aim of linking the content to the thematic focus areas of our other DFID-funded programme COVIDaction (resilient health systems, data, and digital distribution and food security), or areas that the programme was considering for the future (e.g. digital financial support). COVIDaction aims to build a technology and innovation pipeline to support action related to the COVID pandemic by scanning the globe for promising ideas and providing the best ones with grant funding and venture support. Focusing the sessions on COVIDaction areas allowed us to showcase innovations that we surfaced through the programme calls and respective emerging learning.
Yet, while COVID-19 is on everyone’s mind, other wicked challenges such as climate change remain a major obstacle to development in low-income countries particularly. The COVID pandemic only aggravates them, as people already struggle for access to food, water and health services. So it’s important to not forget the application of frontier tech to those issues too. There was also a keen interest in the HOW of experimenting with frontier technologies, not just the WHAT, specifically how to ensure long-term programmes remain adaptive and able to flex with changing contexts.
2. Lived experience of a problem is irreplaceable and local technologists are solving problems in their home turf in highly innovative ways
At Futures we run short, sharp talks bringing in technologists who can show their tech and speak frankly about their own experiences. We call them ‘Lightning Talks’ and we use them as an opportunity to hear from global experts and technologists working in the region, who are looking to deliver technological solutions to some of the most pressing development issues countries are facing. We are grateful to our inspiring speakers who gave their time to join us and share their experiences. Some examples include:
Olivier Defawe from Village Reach showed a range of tech solutions applicable to the COVID-19 response in West Africa. He emphasised the importance of a holistic approach to tech to ensure sustainability, based on collaborations between government, private sector and NGOs.
Oscar Ekponimo spoke about how his app Chowberry is eradicating food waste by connecting people and non-profit organisations to supermarket food that is otherwise going off and is sold at a discounted price.
To help vulnerable people respond to COVID-19, Oscar and his team have set up a direct to customer virtual food bank.
Bernie Akporiaye introduced his system called MaTontine, which digitises traditional savings circles, often used by women across Africa. He explained how its reliance on mobile money instead of cash can help people carry out financial transactions safely during the pandemic. It also promotes the financial inclusion of marginalised women through a range of products, including access to credit and insurance.
3. Tech ethics is top of mind, especially in the context of COVID-19
With COVID-19 we’ve seen a proliferation and use of data tools on a scale unseen in the past (eg. contact tracing apps and others that raise concerns about privacy). There’s a pace and collaboration on a new scale that is presenting new challenges. The risk with personal data tracing on this scale and where governance issues are not addressed, can be one of sleepwalking into surveillance.
Throughout all the sessions, participants were interested in understanding existing tech ethics standards to protect citizens, while maintaining the effectiveness and usefulness of data tools and sources. Through the discussions, we surfaced two different responsible data tools and approaches:
- Hands-on tools useful to enable consistency of responsible data standards across the world, helping the international donor community, civil society and governments to understand the broader global patterns (eg. initiatives like The GovLab’s Data Responsibility Toolkit built around user journeys, for use in Ghana and other countries)
- Local sovereignty and governance approaches that are paramount to ensure the required contextualisation of data and tech ethics (eg. Open Institute’s work to help catalyse a civil society response for responsible data)
We are now looking to support four different Responsible Data (RD) models as part of DFID’s COVIDaction Data Challenge, with applications from a number of West African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and the DRC. These include creating a FAQ on RD related to COVID-19 around sensitive data, scaling an RD toolkit in Ghana, and the development of a civil society-led structure for sensitive data use as part of COVID-19 response. Watch this space for more details in the coming weeks!
4. A regional focus allowed us to compare and connect, but it’s important not to lose the country-level specificities
Before this programme, Futures had always focused on a country level. Adapting Futures to a regional focus allowed us to engage with multiple DFID country offices in the region at once (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and exchange knowledge on what works and what doesn’t between neighbouring countries.
For frontier technologies, this is particularly relevant to explore where their use and uptake can cross borders and attain regional scale and where constraints are common across a region.
Our engagement with the West Africa Regional Hub allowed us to co-create the offer and tailor it to the specific needs of the region, including selecting relevant examples of technologists. However, a regional approach has the risk of losing focus on country specificities, that might have different needs and ecosystems (e.g. regulation, infrastructure), as well as a different level of fluency and confidence with tech across the team at the DFID country office.
Some countries may need to dive into specific sectors such as governance or education, as well as sub-sectors which are related to their ongoing or planned programmes. The need to get this balance right is informing how we are designing the next Futures engagements, taking into account where different countries and regions — and staff in them — are at and tailoring sessions based on this.
5. What online lacks in chemistry, it makes up for with broader access to speakers and colleagues in different countries
For Futures, our priority is to create engaging experiences that form a gateway into the world of frontier technologies for people who are already exploring them in their work, and for people who see themselves as ‘novices’ and are not yet fluent or confident in this field. It’s intended as a safe space where all questions can be explored without judgement, for DFID and UK Government colleagues, and for country colleagues and the technologists themselves.
Some of the experiments we validated, insights we observed and feedback we gathered includes what worked well, and what didn’t work so well which we’ll iterate for next time:
Worked well
We were able to:
- Engage with teams we wouldn’t have otherwise reached with the Futures programme (colleagues from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Sport and Media as well as data science teams, cadres and QA teams).
- Reach speakers in different countries across the West Africa region.
- Access DFID sector expertise and DFID partners (eg. our friends from GSMA talked to us about tech trends in West Africa and wrote about it here).
Next time will be better if…
- We create ‘white space’ around the edges of sessions and space for serendipity. This is where the meaningful conversation happens, but it was hard to replicate with an online-only format.
- We find additional mechanisms for connecting the ecosystem (in absence of a physical ‘get out and go see’ field visits or tech marketplaces).
We are looking forward to taking these learnings forward in our next rendition of Futures and will continue to share our journey with you.
From the Frontier Technology Hub team and DFID West Africa Regional team for Science, Technology and Innovation
