Kick-off Think and Do Tank

VNG International, Millennium Water Alliance and Akvo Foundation have jointly launched the Think and Do Tank in Support of Accelerating Resilience Building in ASALs of Kenya. This is funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Kenya, following their Multi Annual Country Strategy and in their effort to promote learning amongst development stakeholders.  

Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) make up approximately 89% of the country's territory and are critically vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. These regions face extreme weather patterns, including severe droughts and unpredictable flooding, which significantly disrupt local livelihoods. The mostly rural communities in these areas historically depend on agriculture and pastoralism, both of which are increasingly threatened by inconsistent and unexpected rainfall. As a result, crop yields have plummeted, livestock productivity has declined, and competition over dwindling resources has led to heightened conflicts.

Meanwhile, the Embassy’s strategy is a joint focus on both the economic opportunities in  Kenya and on leaving no one behind. For the latter, it employs cross-cutting approaches such as increasing engagement with counties, enhanced resilience (for example against climate-related changes), and leveraging its economic efforts to address the challenges of the ASALs in a more holistic way.

It is against this background that the Think and Do Tank has been initiated. Its objective is to accelerate resilience building and increase stability for sustainable, social, and economic development in the ASALs, and in that way complementing the Embassy’s humanitarian efforts and providing a learning platform amongst development partners, Kenyan government bodies and the private sector. By providing access to quality (climate) data and analysis, the Tank provides a network to boost access to finance for businesses. It also provides connections between, and coordination amongst, development partners, (local) governmental bodies, and the private sector. Through improvement of data and knowledge sharing, and jointly coming up with innovations in investment, the initiative aims to create employment, reduce poverty rates, and promote long-term stability and prosperity in the ASAL regions.

VNG International's focus in this Think and Do Tank is to empower local governments and to enhance their accountability, ensuring that community needs are better integrated into their governance and development processes. By working with social accountability methodologies and the development of a data visualization platform, citizens can feed into the counties’ planning and hold them accountable; combining that with capacity building efforts – for example trough the training and coaching of county officials and supporting counties’ ability to coordinate the actors active in their county – we believe local governments will become more empowered to promote investments for their citizens and better able to respond to their citizens’ needs.

As part of this project, we strongly support the inclusion of local governments in the discussions and activities facilitated through this platform. We applaud the idea that such programs will be more devolution-focussed, recognizing the important role of local governments in fostering sustainable solutions and realizing lasting change. Local governments possess the legitimate mandate and insight to promote development effectively, ensuring that humanitarian and developmental efforts work in harmony rather than in parallel and that investments are widely supported.

We are looking forward to continuing this collaboration with Millennium Water Alliance and Akvo, and to providing a platform to not only create a conducive environment for private sector involvement in the ASALs but also to ensure that investments are aligned with local policies and benefit the community at large.