Our InnoVuntu Process

Creating the Future, Managing the Present

Vijay Govindarajan, Harvard Business Review, March 31, 2016

There is widespread awareness that the decade ahead is a make-or-break one. Zambian leaders from the public, private, and NGO sectors are right now making strategic decisions about the type of agricultural, economic, and technical progress required to navigate it successfully and set the nation on a resilient future course.

New national leadership has formed ministries to green the economy, protect the environment, and develop small and medium enterprises. Zambians are developing key climate legislation, and there a new National Adaptation Plan is under development. Against this backdrop, Zambian leaders in policy, academia, NGO, business, and other sectors have expressed interest in finding ways to work across sectors by participating in the food security initiative.

A broad group of stakeholders/change-makers including women and youth will participate in leadership and systems training, including:

DESIGNING THEIR CREATED FUTURE

Facilitated workshops in which participants across multiple stakeholder groups will generate a shared vision for the future of their country’s food system.

SOLUTIONS ACCELERATION

Mentoring and other one-on-one support to help stakeholder teams launch and scale their solutions.

SYSTEMS MAPPING WORKSHOPS

Workshops where participants map their food system to better understand its underlying forces, identify key leverage points for change, and develop a strategy, with indicators for measuring impact.

CREATION OF A CATALYTIC FUND

To help finance solutions.

SOLUTIONS DESIGN WORKSHOPS AND LEADERSHIP TRAINING

A series of facilitated design labs in which stakeholders will participate in leadership training to design high-impact solutions around key leverage points.

A SUPPORT FRAMEWORK FOR THE INITIATIVE

Ongoing project-support functions such as management, partnership, fundraising, communications/ media, monitoring, and evaluation.

The InnoVuntu Process

Our Key Outcomes

Foster Healthy Food Systems

Cultivate systems-based resilient food solutions that provide accessible, nutritious, healthy food for the people of Zambia.

Bolster Climate Resilience

Implement systems-based, innovative climate solutions based on climate-smart regenerative agriculture, green energy, and the circular economy. These solutions must particularly benefit women, youth, and those living in poverty–all of whom are hardest hit by the impacts of climate change and inequality but have the fewest resources to bear the burden.

Boost Innovation, Jobs, and Livelihoods

Create an economy that is inclusive of women and youth, that enhances sustainable jobs, livelihoods, and food production through increased innovation and growth, and that lays the groundwork for developing a healthy, sustainable economy.

Mobilize Partnerships and Investments

Catalyze investments that advance sustainable food production and livelihoods, climate resilience, equitable opportunities, and innovation.

Transform and Build Leadership

Train and develop a cross-sectional community of change-makers who can adapt to uncertain times, think systemically, and cultivate new, denser, and richer social networks of action. among change agents.