How social entrepreneurs are contributing to HE change

Across the world, social entrepreneurs are being accepted as the new role models. Their innovative problem-solving and critical thinking skills are being regarded as a solution to the current reality, characterised by accelerated disruptions, compounding challenges and a historic opportunity.

In the Transforming Employability for Social Change in East Africa (TESCEA) partnership, which is working to help students in Tanzania and Uganda become better equipped for the world after university, there is an obvious role for social entrepreneurs to play. The TESCEA partnership is made up of four universities in Tanzania and Uganda and three support organisations. I work for one of those support organisations, Ashoka East Africa, which is based in Kenya.

Within TESCEA, a group of leading social entrepreneurs from Ashoka’s network are making their contribution either indirectly by curating and sharing their insights, knowledge and experience or directly within the joint advisory groups (JAGS) of the four universities. The JAGs are groups of stakeholders – local employers, government representatives and other community contacts – that come together with key university staff, to help guide the direction of course redesign and other activities within TESCEA.

The goal is to ensure that changes to curriculum and pedagogical approaches are appropriate and relevant for the world that students will emerge into when they graduate. Our social entrepreneurs contribute expertise in the form of research validation, storytelling to inspire change, fostering ecosystemic approach to transformation, and offering experiential learning.

At the commencement of the TESCEA project, social entrepreneurs from Ashoka East Africa helped validate research on the skills needed to transform employability and shared perspectives on wider change issues for students and faculty along with the other TESCEA partners.

Storytelling to inspire change

Social entrepreneurs have compelling, empowering stories of change detailing their journey from opaqueness to prominence, highlighting core skills needed to build ideas and achieve transformation.

For example, Abu Musuuza, who is a social entrepreneur in the Ashoka network, was one of the guest speakers during Uganda Martyrs University’s JAG stakeholders meeting with students. There, he shared his change-making journey as a co-founder of Village Energy in Uganda which is working to ensure there is a skilled solar technician in every village across Uganda.

Another example is Joseph Sekiku. As a member of Mzumbe University’s JAG in Tanzania, he shared his change-making journey fostering entrepreneurship among farming families in Northern Tanzania. He talked about establishing the Family Alliance for Development Cooperation (FADECO) in Tanzania to improve economic possibilities for small-scale farmers by giving them greater control over their products post-production and greater access to global markets.

When social entrepreneurs like Abu and Joseph share their stories, they serve as a form of inspiration to university leadership, faculty and students – and this can help staff and students to visualise the transformation they want to see through TESCEA.

From the stories from Abu, Joseph and other leading social entrepreneurs, Ashoka East has extracted some patterns that we have distilled and captured into steps that support a learning journey – both in class and outside. We are capturing these steps in a toolkit and this feeds into the development of student portfolios in which students document their learning and skills development to show to future employers and tell their own stories of change.

Fostering an ecosystemic approach

Social entrepreneurs have largely proven that scaling and accelerating innovative solutions require a “collective impact” approach where different actors are rallied to resolve complex problems. Another Ashoka fellow, Mario Molteni, joined one of Mzumbe University’s JAG meetings as a special guest to share his initiative E4Impact (Entrepreneurship for Impact). This is an initiative aimed at training impact entrepreneurs.

Participants acquire knowledge and skills useful for starting a business and for contributing to the sustainable development of their countries. Molteni is now developing a partnership with Mzumbe University’s Students Incubator Centre to support the incubation of ideas, including those originating from students undertaking courses that have been redesigned as part of TESCEA.

Sekiku, whom I mentioned earlier, has offered his community radio as a platform for Mzumbe University and stakeholders in Mzumbe’s JAG. The aim is to share stories of change through the community radio and to host talk shows highlighting the innovations and reforms as a result of TESCEA at the university level and at the class level. This should increase bottom-up demand for problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and build trusting relationships across different ecosystems towards systems change.

Offering experiential learning

Leading social entrepreneurs tend to opine that the theoretical nature of education is often not in sync with the reality on the ground. This, they observe, results in a triple jeopardy for students: outdated education philosophy; obsolete pedagogy; and irrelevant case studies. The TESCEA partnership is working to change that and an important component is ensuring a strong link to the world beyond university.

Students need exposure to practical experience, which social entrepreneurs can provide through experiential learning. In Uganda, Mwalimu Musheshe, who is Gulu University’s JAG chairperson and the founder of African Rural University (ARU), is offering insights on how ARU’s alternative training approach of incorporating social entrepreneurs and traditional wisdom holders in training students is developing effective social development practitioners.

Another social entrepreneur, Joseph Nkandu, who is also the chairman of Uganda Martyrs’ University’s JAG, has opened his entity National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises (NUCAFE), an umbrella national coffee farmers’ organisation founded in 2003, for students from the university to intern in various roles along NUCAFE’s value chain. This provides them with an opportunity to have a real feel of what problem-solving and critical thinking look like in a context they can relate to, with the nuance of local knowledge.

The outcomes of these kinds of experiential learning opportunities offer much-needed evidence for the value in university-industry collaboration.

Next normal

Social entrepreneurs have proven they are ahead of the curve and are willing and ready to share their experience, knowledge, insights, tools and connections for the common good. For instance, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, social entrepreneurs across the globe have been at the forefront of providing solutions while working collaboratively with other stakeholders.

Universities that want to stay ahead of the game, nurturing more change-makers and staying relevant within their communities, will have to forge close working relationships with social entrepreneurs. TESCEA provides this opportunity for the four universities to adjust quickly and set the pace in the emerging reality.

Vincent Otieno Odhiambo is the regional director of Ashoka East Africa in Kenya. This blog was first published on the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) website. The TESCEA partnership is led by INASP (UK) working with Mzumbe University (Tanzania), University of Dodoma (Tanzania), Gulu University (Uganda), Uganda Martyrs University (Uganda), Association for Faculty Enrichment in Learning and Teaching (Kenya) and Ashoka East Africa (Kenya).

TESCEA is part of the UK Aid-funded Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education Innovation and Reform (SPHEIR) programme, supporting higher education transformation in focus countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East. SPHEIR is managed on behalf of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office by a consortium led by the British Council that includes PwC and Universities UK International.