Local, socially minded, entrepreneurs create culturally relevant innovations that drive the behaviour change required for sustainable socio-economic and environmental change in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).   However, they are not well-supported by behavioural science.   There is a huge opportunity to complement their local social and cultural understanding with evidence-based behavioural design principles.   While scientists may see their publication counts suffer, the prize is systemic change in the real-world!

Social enterprises change behaviour and change lives!  From providing clean water in Bangladesh to delivering better healthcare services in India, they create the supply of, and demand for, services and products that do more than just create profit.   They shape the environment in which people live their lives, creating access to everyday essentials.

Where behaviour change is hard, a locally led social enterprise starts with a valuable advantage of deep social and cultural understanding of their customers and community.   They know what their neighbours want and (importantly) don’t want and are also able to comply with local norms and traditional ways of doing business in their community.  

To put it simply, the local entrepreneur is an ideal partner for practitioners and researchers interested in driving real behaviour change in the poorest and most challenging locations. Partnering with these people can lead to truly human-centred and community-centred design.

However, despite their value, local entrepreneurs are not well supported by the behaviour change community.  Potentially, researchers may prefer to work in easier, more controlled environments that will make their work more likely to be published in peer-reviewed journals.   (Market-based interventions are diffuse and difficult to characterise, with self-selected customers that are not randomly allocated to conditions). 

In this short article, I want to illustrate the power of local by highlighting two of our successes at TRANSFORM.   While both enterprises are led by Europeans, they have found ways to devolve leadership to local talent.   However, while such successes should be celebrated, I recognise that these are the exceptions.   Behavioural science needs to do more to help local entrepreneurs change the behaviour of their neighbours and improve their lives.

TRANSFORM (https://www.transform.global/about-transform/)

Since 2015, TRANSFORM, has supported over 75 enterprises in 13 countries.  A joint initiative between Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and EY, TRANSFORM  provides funding and business support to innovative social entrepreneurs in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.  In total, we have now impacted the lives of over 7 million people in low-income households.   

Behaviour change has been at the very heart of these achievements.   To be successful, a social enterprise either needs to affect existing behaviours (e.g., handwashing) or drive the adoption of new products and services.   Success requires, quite literally, changing lives!

The centrality of behaviour change in TRANSFORM, has made sub-Saharan Africa my fascinating and complex research lab! Stepping away from carefully controlled randomised trials, my research goals are to bring the best behavioural science to drive positive change in             African marketplaces.   While this does not allow for the level of rigour required by peer-reviewed journals, it has allowed me to apply theory in the real world and to change real lives.    

Case Studies

Two visionary entrepreneurs: Rob Burnet of Shujaaz and Charlotte Scott of Zayohubs are far from typical Africans.  Both are British but both have found ways of empowering local talent to ensure that their initiatives are made in Africa.  Hopefully, the skilled behavioural scientist will recognise that behavioural principles are embedded in their approaches.   However, later, I will contend that many entrepreneurs lack the behavioural science support provided by TRANSFORM.   This is the gap!

Shujaaz: Revitalising the informal economy for young people in Kenya

Rob Burnet, CEO of Shujaaz, describes how we cannot just inflict Western or foreign ideas and expect these to succeed.

“Young Kenyans report feeling alienated by formal education structures...so how do we help people learn about selling without teaching them? Not through grey-bearded professors, clearly. And not through pre-existing westernised web outlets.”

Rob and the Shujaaz team, realised that the best people to support the economic empowerment of young Kenyans in the informal sector were other young Kenyans.  That is why it created MESH as the first professional networking platform for the African informal sector (a kind of LinkedIn for the informal entrepreneur).  

MESH connects young Kenyans to a digital place where they can talk business, problem solve with the help peer mentors, and access ‘gig’ opportunities provided by the formal sector.   MESH has a look and feel that betrays the fact that Rob trusts the young Kenyans in his organisation to understand how to reach their peers.  

From the perspective of a behavioural scientist, MESH forms groups, provides role models, enhances social identities, and establishes positive social norms.  Its digital data should allow the interested scientist to study the adoption of innovation, formation of groups and outgroups, and the optimal conditions for social influence.   All of this disaggregated by gender.   

Empowering rural communities in Zambia

Zayohubs represents one of our most ambitious and (in my opinion) one of our most successful TRANSFORM projects.   Zayohubs are tech-enabled community hubs that provide social, economic, and environmental benefits in remote Zambian communities.   They are co-designed with communities for the benefit of the community.

Situated in nearly impossible-to-reach rural locations, Zayohub communities are increasingly faced with failing crops.   Many of these communities lack social cohesion and are producing increasing levels of environmental damage, as existential challenges force villagers to burn trees for charcoal, poach, and over-fish the lakes.   

At the heart of the Zayohub business model is community empowerment and leadership.  Hubs were built by community members, while local ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ were trained to manage, and profit from, the services they provide.

The range of services offered were co-created with the villagers.   ‘Premier League Sundays’ were popular with many of the men, while a microfinancing scheme gave women start-up and working capital for their business ideas.  On top of this, access to a mobile phone signal, solar lighting rentals, and bike hire all provided fuel for commerce.

After five years, and despite COVID-19, famines, and floods, the Zayohubs go from strength to strength.  Their success is definitely partly due to the determination and sheer bloody-mindedness of Charlotte (and I would say, SJ, her right-hand woman).  However, a critical component is that the Zayohubs were co-created with the community, built by local youths, and run by local entrepreneurs.   This ensures that their operating principles are consistent with local cultural norms, providing services that were selected by the community.  

Behaviour change has been profound!  Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the case of Mrs M.   Before Zayohubs, she cooked and sold one bucket of fritters per day.   She was limited to only one bucket because spent most of her productive daylight hours looking after her family, had little money to buy ingredients, and lacked access to markets.    Within months of the Zayohub arriving, this was up to three buckets!  A microloan provided cash to buy ingredients and to rent a solar lamp and a bike.   The lamp allowed her to cook late into the evening, while the bike provided transport to the local market where she found more fritter-hungry customers.  

Mrs. M exhibited multiple changes in behaviour in pursuit of a specific outcome.  Broadly, in terms of the ‘COM-B model’ (e.g., Michie et al., 2011), she possessed both the capabilities and motivations to be successful.   What she lacked, was access to opportunities.    What we don’t know is whether these new behaviours also led to the reduction in other, less sustainable behaviours, such as burning trees for charcoal.

New Horizons in Behavioural Science

There is much that can be achieved in complex marketplaces to achieve equity and sustainability.   The local entrepreneur will always be critical –there is a need for someone to continue the work when the funding runs out; someone who has local understanding and has a vested interest in the long-term success of an intervention.  

While, improving the business skills of these entrepreneurs is clearly a pressing need, so is the need to augment their efforts through the application of good behavioural science.   The potential rewards for the scientist are great both personally and theoretically.

References

Michie, S., van Stralen, M.M. & West, R. The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation Sci 6, 42 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42.