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Who are we and what do we do how?

We are a team of Africans of all shapes, sizes and colours that have travelled a bumpy, living lab and action-learning road from being technologists to becoming social-enterprise developers, from developing and providing (ICT) systems for development to a “development through enterprise” approach with warm-blooded, technology-equipped, human networks. In our world multi-purpose and integration are important ingredients for sustainability – which means that service delivery, in rural areas specifically, should cater for economies of “scope” and not economies of “scale”. This view has the added benefit that it provides for a wide range of services over the same cost structures.  Our networks are mostly deployed in the contexts of local or traditional authorities and for this reason we have also developed a decision framework for local economic and enterprise development (LEED) planning.  This focus is also reflected in our name REEDiSA:  Rural Economic and Enterprise Development in Southern Africa. Our approach finds the sweet spot in the overlapping fields of technology application (“boxes”), enterprise development (“business”) and human-action (“behaviour”) changes and outcomes  - shown in the diagram below.

Boxes, business and behaviour

What do we do specifically?

We are currently very active in the township agriculture arena where we are combining our youth network approach and learning with Fresh Life Produce’s vertical growing technology to address nutrition, food security and agro-enterprise needs.

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What

How

Self-sustaining, multi-sphere Social Enterprise networks to support “development through enterprise” in Southern Africa

Design, implement, enable and support networks of (young) social entrepreneurs in various non urban, under-serviced areas of Southern Africa in a manner that:

  • Provides reach extension for public, private and non-profit organisations to deliver products and services to the base of the pyramid (BoP);
  • Formalises, captures, enhances and distributes indigenous knowledge and learning concerning, and originated by, socio-economic networks in under-serviced communities to enable these networks to function more effectively and to participate in both  the knowledge and broader national economy; and
  • Provides a broad export & import channel for products and services from and to these communities.

In which ways?

Research

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We have conducted 50 people-years of research in and with the CSIR, Africa’s leading science and technology institute

Development

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Team members have more than 35 person-years of technology development and 20 years of Small Business Development experience

Implementation

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The team collectively has 20 years of community learning and engagement experience with Kellogs Foundation, 24 years of change agent network deployment and 50 years of Agricultural development experience

The video above provides a brief picture of our latest and most comprehensive initiative in the Vuwani area of the Limpopo Province of South Africa