Equity and innovation: Charting a path for power-sharing and locally led development

When development organizations think about or discuss equity, several common questions and concerns arise: Do our efforts foster inclusion? Is our organization actively working to shift power to local actors, thereby creating a fairer and more equitable landscape? Are we inadvertently creating obstacles to genuine localization and its impact? And sometimes more pragmatically, how do we demonstrate progress on these equity and localization efforts?

Considering the critical importance of these questions, initiatives like the Grand Bargain, Pledge for Change, and the Whistler Principles emerged to try to rectify the colonial legacy of development that has often minimized and even suppressed the power and agencies of local changemakers and innovators to lead local and regional development.

Despite the noble intentions behind these initiatives, the development sector remains deeply entrenched in implicit and explicit colonial and structural hierarchies. Partnerships between funders and practitioners in the Global North and partners in emerging economies remain highly unequal and limit collaborative capacity and the impact to truly identify and address root causes of problems and achieve meaningful impact at scale. Only a fraction of funding finds its way to African NGOs or women-led organizations (p. 14), let alone African women’s organizations. This is a stark reality that demands the international development sector’s full attention.

Working within the Results for Development Innovation Practice, which serves as the Secretariat for the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA), a network of the world’s largest development innovation funding agencies, we have long wrestled with questions of equity in development. We wondered how those in the innovation space, leveraging their agility and flexibility in the sector, might contribute to shifting power dynamics and improving equity. Having championed efforts to advance equity within IDIA, we were eager to find ways to enhance inclusion and further genuine localization.

In our pursuit of impact through innovation, we encountered a common challenge: many individuals within large institutions understood that greater inclusion created positive results and expressed a desire to advance equity; however many felt powerless to affect meaningful change within existing structures and processes. This realization became a catalyst for action. We understood that transformative change was not just desirable — it is essential.

We began this IDIA research by seeking a lead learning partner who could help us understand what an “equitable partnership” meant. The African Visionary Fund co-CEO Atti Worku and systems strategist Sibabalwe Mona stepped up to help us chart a path toward approaches that shift power to those closest to the issues. Other contributors to this work include Ngozi Erondu-Manyonganise, co-commissioner of the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health, as well as IDIA Global Innovations Advisors from Africa and Asia, Paula Kiura, Johanssen Obanda, Mishal Khan and Mahfuza Mala.

Under the leadership of these equity champions, we resolved to surface more equitable practices, tangible examples and equity metrics to drive change. The research and convening to gather feedback from over 200 participants globally was funded by Unicef, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Skoll Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada. The results are the IDIA Equity Principles & Metrics Framework for Meaningful Localization and a synthesis of learning that launched at the IDIA meeting alongside the Skoll World Forum.

The framework encapsulates eight crucial principles, as well as recommended actions and reflection questions from local ecosystem actors to drive equity in international development. These practices are categorized under three interconnected and reinforcing themes: Fair Funding, which leads to more Equitable Partnerships, which in turn leads to Greater Agency and Systems Change.

Below we dive deeper into those three themes and what we learned about them as we built this framework. We have included a few reflection questions that apply to both donors and practitioners. See the full Equity & Innovation Synthesis here.

Fair funding

Fair funding refers to just, transparent, and responsive resource allocation that meets the needs of local communities and national causes. Fair funding aims to address historical disadvantages and ensure that marginalized or underrepresented groups have access to resources and opportunities. It is intended to limit the burden on partners.

Three critical and guiding principles tied to fair funding include:

• Give flexible funding to local or national innovators.
• Drive resources directly to underrepresented and marginalized groups.
  Ask “How might I best understand who is marginalized? What means are available to level the playing field to ensure participation and access to resources by those marginalized?”
• Simply the funding process to be fair and transparent.
  Ask “How might the funding process be improved to limit undue burden on innovators? Is my risk-appetite one that will enable local organizations to participate and enhance agency and impact, or do risk-averse protocols eliminate important agents for change?”

Equitable partnerships

Equitable partnerships promote collaboration, inclusivity and power-sharing between donors, development practitioners and the innovators, organizations or communities they support. These partnerships recognize that approaches are most effective when those with lived experiences and deep knowledge of the issues and topics being addressed drive them. This theme involves engaging with communities as equal partners, respecting their autonomy and valuing their unique expertise and perspectives.

These are the three underlying principles of equitable partnerships:

• Build diverse teams for funding design and decision making across innovation processes.
  Ask “Who is consulted or part of the strategy, design, testing, implementation and decision-making processes for funding and innovation solutions? How can I eliminate implicit bias in policies that reinforce an unequal innovation ecosystem or further inequalities or hierarchies?”
• Be transparent with — and accountable to — innovators.
• Solicit feedback and listen to innovators.

Greater agency and systems change

This third theme highlights the importance of empowering individuals and communities to drive change and tackle the root causes of social issues. It acknowledges that we should not provide short-term solutions but address the underlying systems and structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice and empower local change agents who have invaluable knowledge to address change.

Systems change involves working toward broader social, political, and economic transformations that create more equitable and just societies. We must advocate for policy changes, support grassroots movements and promote long-term strategies that challenge systemic barriers and promote lasting impact. Without such shifts, we will not reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Two principles accompany this third theme:

• Center and elevate collaborative local leadership to enable innovative and inclusive solutions.
  Ask “How am I, or how are we, supporting greater agency among partners, innovators or groups adversely affected?”
• Advocate for wider systems change to shift power to local actors.
  Ask “What role do I play to enable collective action toward more inclusive and sustainable innovation ecosystems? How might I, or how might we, unlock the keys to systems change — to share power, relationships and resources — with those who have limited access or voice?”

In the development of this framework, we learned that using an equity lens to shift power to those that are closest to the issues results in more sustainable, effective innovations (Sharetrust and Warande Advisory Centre, 2022) and makes sense from both from a human rights and business perspective. We invite you to join us in this movement towards equity and localization. Jump in and ask yourself these reflective questions to see where you can shift power toward more equitable partnerships and systems. The time for action is now.

Visit the IDIA Equity & Metrics Framework site to learn more about individual or institutional actions or practical approaches you might adopt to drive change. Ask us about our interactive workshops to engage with your team or institution. Reach out to join our power-shifting Community of Practice.

Together, let’s explore innovative approaches, challenge entrenched inequalities and carve out pathways for genuine change.