Listening to the River: The Secret Weapon of Good Leaders
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Listening to the River: The Secret Weapon of Good Leaders
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July 27, 2020
How do you operate without a playbook? For Amrote Abdella, Regional Director for Microsoft’s 4Afrika Initiative, and Aggie Konde, Vice President of Program Development & Innovation at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the coronavirus pandemic has been a positive test of leadership. And an opportunity to re-examine even the best-laid plans.
In this wide-ranging joint interview with two women driving the future of agriculture and technology in Africa, Isaac Kwaku Fokuo, Jr. probes the question of what a post-crisis vision for regional collaboration in Africa looks like and what partnerships are required to get there. Amrote and Aggie address everything from how they’re coping in the new work-from-home world to the role of technology in future-proofing development strategy and accelerating private sector development.
Isaac Kwaku Fokuo: Collaboration appears to be a common theme here. You both work for organizations that are dependent, to some extent, on partnerships — AGRA and Microsoft. At AGRA, you have member states, and Microsoft is one of the world’s largest multinationals. How do we collaborate to support Africa during this crisis?
Amrote Abdella: The reality is that between 50–60% of our SMEs will still be here post-COVID. I look to some of our SME and start-up partners. Pre-crisis, many of them were in a strong position, but coming out of it, the reality will be different depending on the solution they provide, their ability to scale and their relevance to the market post-COVID. I think we should be focused on supporting and sustaining them. That’s where a company like Microsoft and other companies that are large enough to provide true ecosystem support can make a big difference.
We just published an article two days ago about our partnership with Broad Reach, a healthcare provider out of South Africa, focusing on vulnerable and HIV patients. Today they’ve just hit a reach of one million people on their platform that they have re-purposed to support COVID patients, but also the dissemination of information. Microsoft has invested in the partnership to make sure that they can scale, that they have the right technical support and ability to generate real impact.
Whether you’re in civil society or whether you’re in government, whether you’re an SME or a multinational, you need to be able to identify what your strength is and go after it.
Aggie Konde: We are operating in a place where markets are often dysfunctional. Governments have a role to play and the private sector has a role to play. Development partners have a role to play. But the challenge is figuring out where they are complementary because many times there is a mismatch or misalignment of goals.
One of the biggest reasons for this misalignment or mismatch is a lack of information. We would collaborate more effectively and more efficiently if we had a greater understanding of the degree of resilience the average African smallholder farmer has in the face of this pandemic.
If we did have that information, I’d wager that many more private sector actors would come to the table to ensure that smallholder farmers remain resilient. But, at present, we don't have access to information in terms of how much acreage they have planted or if they have access to inputs. At present, we don't have any information or credible data to tell us which markets still exist, which price is right, and whether they're continuing to plant in the face of heavy rains. Without those insights, SMEs can’t create aggregation centers or engagement in value addition.
Read more here.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
