[Applause]
this is Frank a 40 old farmer from the
northeastern region of Ivory Coast along
with 20 other participants he came to my
workshop with a tiny glimpse of hope to
find a solution out of rural poverty
when I said to him that I didn’t bring
him a solution he looks at me and says I
knew you were just another white empty
promise wasting my precious time so I’m
here today to tell you why I am a waste
of time don’t leave the room guys and I
will also tell you why Frank changed his
mind
so essentially Frank is right despite
decades of development aid and
cooperation and billions of dollars
flowing into the African continent
almost half of the population is still
poor and what I find even more shocking
is how much of African Development
African Development is still financed by
external money and aid and besides all
the graphs and bubbles and indexes that
we have come up with about poverty do we
still ask ourselves the question of why
Africa cannot help itself I feel like
that by focusing on analyzing complex
problems of poverty and development we
forget to think about what it actually
means to be dependent on someone what
being dependent on external aid means
and does to humans what it does to
societies so as I stand in front of
Frank I am a white privileged Western
woman in front of a black poor African
farmer I find it important to spell this
out loud because by realizing what I am
buddy
by being whites
and the effect this has on the other
mainly the non-white person has made me
understand a lot of what I should and
should not do and believe as a white
person working in West Africa the
perception of white supremacy is to let
the core of most of the relationships of
Africa and the outside world and
especially its donors and by not naming
it because we as white people are
uncomfortable hearing it I think that we
really fail our job so as a white
Western and privileged woman whose hard
things and beats with Africa I think we
need to rethink development cooperation
we need to start with Frank so if we are
to start with Frank why don’t we ask him
the question of how he feels like if
there’s constantly someone taking on the
front seat in his life refinance your
cooperative because it worked elsewhere
plant a tree because it will restore
your ecosystem hey use democracy because
in Europe it’s a fantastic form of
governance quite naturally no matter how
well intended this relationship will
lead to a loss of willingness and
ability to create solutions to make and
shape your immediate environments so
without creation a society doesn’t
really create anything a society
eventually becomes a recipient of input
instead of a creator of output to me
this is the moment a society loses it so
it loses its citizens so quite logically
no matter what you put into that society
nothing sustainable or anything can
really come out of it right because
something in the middle has died so
going back to the workshop and rule
ivory coast I want to talk to you about
another workshop participant madam
coolie banished a 60 year old female
farmer who was illiterate
she came up to me talking about her
hopeless struggle to sell her
agricultural products in the rural areas
as to a lack of infrastructure a lack of
market information and plat price
fluctuations and many many many other
things basically everything is well
so I couldn’t really tell anything I
couldn’t say anything four hours later
when I’m coulibaly and her group of
other woman present the very first home
delivery service for agricultural
products enroll Ivory Coast which works
without financial aids but for the
pooling of personal networks through the
union of farmers associations and the
creation of a harmonized offer Wow how
did we get from absolute hopelessness to
this in just four hours I tell you why
creativity creativity is the ability to
imagine yourself in a situation
differently from what immediately meets
the eye
without creativity I cannot imagine what
my product looks like other than the one
I have in front of me I cannot imagine
who my client could be other than one
the persons that I already see so by the
very nature of development a development
cooperation call it as we may and the
dependence resulting from it we have
killed African space for creativity
so people have to reconquer and redesign
this space for creativity and so one way
to get there is design thinking simply
speaking design thinking is a process of
creative problem-solving that allows
anyone who is not trained as a designer
to use the tools of a designer’s toolkit
like empathy or experimentation and
create concrete solutions to a problem
he has defined that is feasible
desirable and viable we know this
methodology generally from startup
circles or innovation networks but what
is interesting is
that the very principles of the method
of design thinking can actually be
applied and found at the core of our
problem of a dependency so a design
thinking process has loads of different
phases but one phase creates empathy and
focus such that you actually really
understand the problem that you want to
tackle and take ownership of this issue
and the solution that you will create
afterwards the second phase uses
brainstorming and ideation to stimulate
your creativity to think beyond the
obvious and think outside of the box in
the process of creating your solution
and another phase makes you create a
very simple concrete test version of
your solution very quickly and
immediately go back to the end user for
feedback this is actually an experience
of collective intelligence to arrive at
a concrete solution this is the moment
of tension frank is back as you know he
wasn’t really happy in the beginning
well after four hours of design thinking
he came up to me and said I’m sorry I
did not trust you but you gained our
confidence by showing us once and for
all we need to take our future back into
our own hands and that we can actually
create solutions ourselves by engaging
citizens all over ivory coast in eight
workshops six workshop facilitators
inspired 150 farmers and youngsters to
retake ownership of their own situations
and contributed to the emergence of 25
concrete citizen driven solutions for
the agricultural sector four out of
these six workshop facilitators were
young locals that never anim facilitated
a Design Thinking workshop before
tomorrow these four can train 10 others
in design thinking methods to inspire a
movement of engaged citizens solving the
challenges of their country
so does this mean design thinking is the
magic bullet we got it all the problems
of Africa are solved honestly when I
first arrived in West Africa I did not
believe in the impact that creativity
and collective intelligence could have
on the poorest very remotely living and
illiterate populations that I
encountered but bit by bit and workshop
by workshop all the doubts and questions
that I had vanished when looking at the
people coming out of the soup of the
workshops that we organized so Design
Thinking is so much more than just a
method of challenge solving design
thinking can actually be a method that
helps us really completely reshape and
rethink development cooperation by
putting development back into the hands
of those concerned citizens so to start
this rethinking I would like to end with
three main points first and foremost I
think that we need to actively
counteract the omnipresence and so
misleading picture of the rich European
educated person that comes to help the
poor African uneducated person this is
why I try my utmost to take on the
passenger seats and I also try not be to
be that annoying passenger kinda says
like go to the right go to the left no I
try to keep back and I think that’s in
the face of past and current failures of
development aid and development
cooperation I must be more humble more
passive and constantly self-critical of
what I bring to Africa being a workshop
facilitator is an ideal way of learning
this secondly the results that come out
of creative processes and citizen
engagement will not reflect what we
judge good or just when regaining their
creative space
citizens will develop their
entrepreneurial models their forms of
governance and eventually their African
utopia we have to stop once and for all
make our aids conditional on our ideas
even if this idea is called sustainable
development last but not least Design
Thinking can actually be just as
powerful of a tool for any actor in
development cooperation be this NGOs
institutions companies governments but
making us explore multi-stakeholder
collaboration or engaging citizens in
donor countries in completely different
ways with problem of problems of the
African continent
with the with a philosophy of design
thinking at heart any projects can
accelerate active citizen engagement if
we really believe in Africa’s emergence
we have to believe in its people and the
ability to make choices and design
solutions and we have to be more humble
about what we’ve proposed and with
Design Thinking a powerful tool to
engage citizens along the way is right
at hand
so once regained their creative space
and their space for citizen engagement
I’m utterly optimistic that African
societies will be good ones that will
manage to transform their beautiful
culture of joy of living redistribution
of wealth pride and so many other
communitarian values into fruitful
sustainable and above all inclusive
societies thank you very much
[Applause]
this is Frank a 40 old farmer from the
northeastern region of Ivory Coast along
with 20 other participants he came to my
workshop with a tiny glimpse of hope to
find a solution out of rural poverty
when I said to him that I didn’t bring
him a solution he looks at me and says I
knew you were just another white empty
promise wasting my precious time so I’m
here today to tell you why I am a waste
of time don’t leave the room guys and I
will also tell you why Frank changed his
mind
so essentially Frank is right despite
decades of development aid and
cooperation and billions of dollars
flowing into the African continent
almost half of the population is still
poor and what I find even more shocking
is how much of African Development
African Development is still financed by
external money and aid and besides all
the graphs and bubbles and indexes that
we have come up with about poverty do we
still ask ourselves the question of why
Africa cannot help itself I feel like
that by focusing on analyzing complex
problems of poverty and development we
forget to think about what it actually
means to be dependent on someone what
being dependent on external aid means
and does to humans what it does to
societies so as I stand in front of
Frank I am a white privileged Western
woman in front of a black poor African
farmer I find it important to spell this
out loud because by realizing what I am
buddy
by being whites
and the effect this has on the other
mainly the non-white person has made me
understand a lot of what I should and
should not do and believe as a white
person working in West Africa the
perception of white supremacy is to let
the core of most of the relationships of
Africa and the outside world and
especially its donors and by not naming
it because we as white people are
uncomfortable hearing it I think that we
really fail our job so as a white
Western and privileged woman whose hard
things and beats with Africa I think we
need to rethink development cooperation
we need to start with Frank so if we are
to start with Frank why don’t we ask him
the question of how he feels like if
there’s constantly someone taking on the
front seat in his life refinance your
cooperative because it worked elsewhere
plant a tree because it will restore
your ecosystem hey use democracy because
in Europe it’s a fantastic form of
governance quite naturally no matter how
well intended this relationship will
lead to a loss of willingness and
ability to create solutions to make and
shape your immediate environments so
without creation a society doesn’t
really create anything a society
eventually becomes a recipient of input
instead of a creator of output to me
this is the moment a society loses it so
it loses its citizens so quite logically
no matter what you put into that society
nothing sustainable or anything can
really come out of it right because
something in the middle has died so
going back to the workshop and rule
ivory coast I want to talk to you about
another workshop participant madam
coolie banished a 60 year old female
farmer who was illiterate
she came up to me talking about her
hopeless struggle to sell her
agricultural products in the rural areas
as to a lack of infrastructure a lack of
market information and plat price
fluctuations and many many many other
things basically everything is well
so I couldn’t really tell anything I
couldn’t say anything four hours later
when I’m coulibaly and her group of
other woman present the very first home
delivery service for agricultural
products enroll Ivory Coast which works
without financial aids but for the
pooling of personal networks through the
union of farmers associations and the
creation of a harmonized offer Wow how
did we get from absolute hopelessness to
this in just four hours I tell you why
creativity creativity is the ability to
imagine yourself in a situation
differently from what immediately meets
the eye
without creativity I cannot imagine what
my product looks like other than the one
I have in front of me I cannot imagine
who my client could be other than one
the persons that I already see so by the
very nature of development a development
cooperation call it as we may and the
dependence resulting from it we have
killed African space for creativity
so people have to reconquer and redesign
this space for creativity and so one way
to get there is design thinking simply
speaking design thinking is a process of
creative problem-solving that allows
anyone who is not trained as a designer
to use the tools of a designer’s toolkit
like empathy or experimentation and
create concrete solutions to a problem
he has defined that is feasible
desirable and viable we know this
methodology generally from startup
circles or innovation networks but what
is interesting is
that the very principles of the method
of design thinking can actually be
applied and found at the core of our
problem of a dependency so a design
thinking process has loads of different
phases but one phase creates empathy and
focus such that you actually really
understand the problem that you want to
tackle and take ownership of this issue
and the solution that you will create
afterwards the second phase uses
brainstorming and ideation to stimulate
your creativity to think beyond the
obvious and think outside of the box in
the process of creating your solution
and another phase makes you create a
very simple concrete test version of
your solution very quickly and
immediately go back to the end user for
feedback this is actually an experience
of collective intelligence to arrive at
a concrete solution this is the moment
of tension frank is back as you know he
wasn’t really happy in the beginning
well after four hours of design thinking
he came up to me and said I’m sorry I
did not trust you but you gained our
confidence by showing us once and for
all we need to take our future back into
our own hands and that we can actually
create solutions ourselves by engaging
citizens all over ivory coast in eight
workshops six workshop facilitators
inspired 150 farmers and youngsters to
retake ownership of their own situations
and contributed to the emergence of 25
concrete citizen driven solutions for
the agricultural sector four out of
these six workshop facilitators were
young locals that never anim facilitated
a Design Thinking workshop before
tomorrow these four can train 10 others
in design thinking methods to inspire a
movement of engaged citizens solving the
challenges of their country
so does this mean design thinking is the
magic bullet we got it all the problems
of Africa are solved honestly when I
first arrived in West Africa I did not
believe in the impact that creativity
and collective intelligence could have
on the poorest very remotely living and
illiterate populations that I
encountered but bit by bit and workshop
by workshop all the doubts and questions
that I had vanished when looking at the
people coming out of the soup of the
workshops that we organized so Design
Thinking is so much more than just a
method of challenge solving design
thinking can actually be a method that
helps us really completely reshape and
rethink development cooperation by
putting development back into the hands
of those concerned citizens so to start
this rethinking I would like to end with
three main points first and foremost I
think that we need to actively
counteract the omnipresence and so
misleading picture of the rich European
educated person that comes to help the
poor African uneducated person this is
why I try my utmost to take on the
passenger seats and I also try not be to
be that annoying passenger kinda says
like go to the right go to the left no I
try to keep back and I think that’s in
the face of past and current failures of
development aid and development
cooperation I must be more humble more
passive and constantly self-critical of
what I bring to Africa being a workshop
facilitator is an ideal way of learning
this secondly the results that come out
of creative processes and citizen
engagement will not reflect what we
judge good or just when regaining their
creative space
citizens will develop their
entrepreneurial models their forms of
governance and eventually their African
utopia we have to stop once and for all
make our aids conditional on our ideas
even if this idea is called sustainable
development last but not least Design
Thinking can actually be just as
powerful of a tool for any actor in
development cooperation be this NGOs
institutions companies governments but
making us explore multi-stakeholder
collaboration or engaging citizens in
donor countries in completely different
ways with problem of problems of the
African continent
with the with a philosophy of design
thinking at heart any projects can
accelerate active citizen engagement if
we really believe in Africa’s emergence
we have to believe in its people and the
ability to make choices and design
solutions and we have to be more humble
about what we’ve proposed and with
Design Thinking a powerful tool to
engage citizens along the way is right
at hand
so once regained their creative space
and their space for citizen engagement
I’m utterly optimistic that African
societies will be good ones that will
manage to transform their beautiful
culture of joy of living redistribution
of wealth pride and so many other
communitarian values into fruitful
sustainable and above all inclusive
societies thank you very much
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: