ROOTS OF CHANGE HOW SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS ADVANCE SYSTEMS CHANGE IN AFRICA

Despite significant progress in the alleviation of poverty, and in promoting health and education, recent reports indicate that the international community seems far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 (United Nations. (2022). https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/). Which is why, in the 2022 SDG report, the United Nations Secretary General has called for bold action. Time is running out and humankind is confronted with an urgent need to find, support, and fund transformative solutions at a far greater pace than ever.
At Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs, we have been at the forefront of connecting the concept of social entrepreneurship to systems change since the very beginning of our work in the early 1980s. All the social entrepreneurs we elect to the Ashoka Fellowship are tackling messy, complex social problems, trying to create change at a systemic level.
In this session, we will showcase, through practical case studies of Ashoka Africa Fellows, why and how these leaders have developed systems-change strategies.
To initiate the conversation, we have selected five Fellows out of the 470 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our goal is to create a greater understanding of systems change within three main groups: i) practitioners, i.e., social entrepreneurs and leaders in the citizen sector; ii) investors for social change in Africa; and iii) influential players such as corporate and government leaders. This is particularly important given that, as a collective of social entrepreneurs and changemakers, we are hearing and witnessing the following: the need to demystify and contextualize systems change, social entrepreneurs continue to face major barriers to funding their most impactful work, there is still a strong investment bias towards expat-led social ventures in Africa, yet there are remarkable solutions on the continent and current enthusiasm for social enterprise and the power of markets (Reflections from Bill Drayton, architect of social entrepreneurship by Michael Zakaras. https://medium.com/change-maker/no-you-dont-need-to-start-a-business-2c80c44d11e1
The objectives of the session are to:
• deepen the understanding of systems change practices, in particular in the Af rican context;
• distil how-tos, insights, and lessons from the experience of social entrepreneurs who are changing systems;
• share those insights with three target groups: social entrepreneurs and leaders in the citizen sector; impact investors including philanthropists, foundations, investors, corporate donors, government agencies, and multilateral organizations that want to evolve their current approach to funding in a manner that positions them to invest in systems change efforts; and influential organizations such as corporate and government leaders who can potentially become instrumental in changing systems.