Long overdue, I have figured out the mechanics of #substack, where I intend to share long sentences on Africa-facing development and investment initiatives, and ideas on what we need to question and design (including new institutional forms!) in order to change the status quo.
My first post is on the delight of returning to University of Oxford for Skoll World Forum and the #Sidebar#marmalade lineups. Of the sessions I attended, the discussion on scale by Mulago was most striking.
Some of the questions I encountered:
➡️ Can VC-style “exponential growth” work in the African context where social entrepreneurs must first build the very systems growth depends on?
➡️ Should funders stop chasing singular winners and instead finance the slow, overhead-like work of ecosystem-building?
➡️ Might a focus on scale lead philanthropy to abandon its duty to fund experimentation (and failure) as part of social pioneering?
➡️ Will the search for scale crowd out the pluralism the social sector requires?
➡️ And last but not least, on gatekeepers, who exercise the enormous power to choose among futures: if 5 different solutions could improve the dignity of lives lived in places like Bobaracho in western Kenya, what should be required of (s)he who gets to decide on which solution should survive and scale, and therefore which future should unfold?
While the answer to each of these questions can be “it depends”, I hope their very existence serves to connect conversations currently happening in disjointed silos and spark collaboration/new ideas.
Please read on for my thoughts, and feel free to share what you think: https://lnkd.in/gae5FZMP
[Photos: At Jesus College in 2026; the first time I was at Jesus defending my dissertation; and slides from the packed Mulago event]
