Date: 26 - 28 August 2008
Location: Winneba Ghana
Organizers: One Village Foundation

Objectives

A key objective of this IDRC funded project is to “provide sufficient motivation to influence policy makers, demonstrate the failure of the monopoly service providers in experimenting or allowing cheaper access technologies and result in a high level of acceptance from end users”.

The central theme relates to change and in particular, policy influence. Whilst it is understood it takes many years to effect such change, the above project intends to make a contribution towards change and monitor the behavioural changes in key Boundary Behaviours who are responsible for that change. Outcome Mapping has been identified as methodology that will help the team plan, monitor and evaluate the project in order to document, learn, and report results.

Delegates

Pictured below are the representatives of the Wireless Africa project from the following countries :

• Ghana
• Kenya
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Nigeria
• Rwanda
• Somalia
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zambia

Facilitators

Chris Morris from the Meraka Institute, CSIR, South Africa and Uys du Buisson facilitated the Outcome Mapping training sessions

Agenda

The agenda spanned three days and covered an orientation of the three stages of Outcome Mapping, how OM relates to projects in which research and learning are the key issues and how partners could position their project to facilitate changes in behaviour.

The outline agenda was:

• Wireless Africa aims and objectives
• OM framework
• Intentional design
• Journaling
• Utilisation focused evaluation
• Application to projects
• Discussion of business models and demand side studies

Particular attention was paid to completing draft submissions of Stage 1: Intentional Design.

Details of process

Outcome Mapping Intentional Design

The overall structure of Outcome Mapping as a monitoring and evaluation framework was explained and the specific attention was paid to the planning component: Intentional Design. Country partners systematically went through the steps during the three days to complete their draft submissions on:

1.Vision
2.Mission
3.Boundary partners
4.Outcome challenges
5.Progress markers
6.Strategy maps
7.Organisational practices

Various presentations by country partners were done, culminating in presentations of their draft intentional design by all the country partners on the last day.

The presentations showed that the delegates had a sufficient understanding of the framework to be able to apply it to their own projects.

The Intentional Design drafts need to be developed further and submitted by 12 September 2008. Chris Morris and Uys du Buisson will comment on these submissions by 19 September 2008, after which the Intentional Design will be finalised and implementation will start.

Journaling and electronic forum

Intentional design forms the basis for the planned activities in influencing changes in behaviour of key Boundary Partners. The journaling and story telling process will be introduced as soon as the Intentional Design has been completed.

Project partners need to focus on their key informants and submit the first journal report by the end of September 2008. After that, the requirements are to:

Submit a postcard report on key events or stories by the 15th of each month. More comprehensive report by the end of each month

Chris Morris and Uys du Buisson will investigate the options and establish a group electronic forum for receiving and disseminating journal inputs across Wireless Africa participants.

Regulatory influence

A key component of the Wireless Africa project is to identify the constraints posed by the telecommunications regulatory environment in the different countries. Country partners were encouraged to identify specific government and regulatory boundary partners to engage with to start the dialogue about regulatory and progress to the point where consideration is given to regulatory reform. Specific attention needs to be paid to this issue in the journaling reports.

It was also suggested that country partners start analysing specific aspects of country telecom policy, legislation and regulation and suggest changes to these to promote pro-poor products and services. This would make the engagement with regulatory Boundary Partners if they are aware of what needs to be changed and how it needs to be changed.
Gender

Many of the country partners have a particular emphasis on the inclusion and empowerment of women in different initiatives and overcoming cultural and other barriers to establish a critical mass of female ICT users, operators and advocates.
Localisation

The consensus in the group was that the ICT skills existing in Africa for local implementation of affordable ICT access proves that Africans can drive the expansion of localised solutions spanning technical, design, implementation and even manufacturing capabilities. Further expansion of localisation would be in terms of electronic content, management systems for enhanced service delivery, business modelling and sustainability. Specific attention will be paid to content localisation for cultural and heritage preservation.
Wireless Africa Alliance

The suggestion was made in the June 2008 workshop to form a Wireless Africa Alliance (WAA). This issue was taken further during the workshop. The details of the various aspects of the discussion during the workshop were consolidated into an Intentional Design for the WAA as the overarching structure to be formed. It was then possible to create a framework into which all country partner projects would feed, based on the groundbreaking work being done in different countries.

The progress of the development of the WAA will be monitored and evaluated using the OM framework, with particular reference to cross-cutting issues and consolidating categories of activities into evidence for a broader African policy on ICT’s

Way Forward

Each country partner would prepare the full Intentional Design and use the Outcome Journal to monitor their first Boundary Partner by the end of September. Thereafter, monthly journals will be submitted.