Kenya, India June ’25 – Sprints, NGOs and Funders

On a long long flight from Delhi to San Francisco, after another trip to Kenya and India, where we had lots of deep conversations with multiple NGOs, interacted with many of our software and data partners in the ecosystem and had conversations (and lots of questions) with many of our existing funders on where we are and the direction that we are headed in with Tech4Dev 3.0

At a broader level, we now have 44 folks at Tech4Dev, which also means we have many other contributors writing blog posts, so I don’t feel the need to write as often as I used to. But, I still think it’s useful for me to jot down some thoughts and reflections periodically. Without further ado, I’ll revert to my normal listicle style of things that I leave the trip with

• Started the trip in Kenya with the AI for Global Development (AI4GD) that we help The Agency Fund with. This time, we decided to keep it focused on the 8 NGOs in the cohort, and that helped with the quality of the presentations, interactions and discussions on different challenges that the teams faced. Specifically, we got quite a few good ideas of things to add to our platform, including: automated phase 1 evals (as part of deployment), classification of incoming messages in a generic manner (supervised learning), and a co-pilot platform for the sector. 
  
• Prior to the sprint, we held a meetup for some mid-to-large NGOs in Nairobi to learn about some of their issues and challenges. Specifically, it was great to finally connect and have a good conversation with Ayan from Akvo and learn more about the work they are doing. It was also quite informative to learn more about the agriculture space and the work that Digital Green is doing from Vineet and Sai. Learned a lot about how things work in that field in India over a happy hour discussion (lack of mechanisation in smallholder farms in India, the work involved for farmers, water retention in crops due to genetic modification, which contributes to the pollution in North India and more)
• We had planned a funder day for the first day of the sprint, but unfortunately, due to the unrest in Nairobi, a few participants could not make it. Had really good conversations with the funders who attended, especially an in-depth conversation on the role of technology and AI with NGOs with Tye from Emerson Collective. How can we approach the problem in a systematic way rather than the patchwork of solutions and bandaids that are deployed in the sector due to a lack of capacity and skills? Also had interesting conversations on the importance of funding experiments and giving NGOs the flexibility of allocating resources to some promising new things, without associating it with specific KPIs in the early days, e.g, I think its too early to say, we will only fund your AI experiments if you can show us the impact it will have for the grant we are giving you. Unfortunately, I don’t think we made any progress in convincing these two foundations that a flexible approach is also important in some cases.
• Continued the conversation with funders and partners in India, especially with a focus on our next 3-year plan for Tech4Dev. I expected some push back or critique for parts of the plan, but in general, everyone felt that we were headed in the right direction without being too ambitious. Specifically, the feedback involved:
  • We need to start thinking a bit more about the measures of impact and ROI for the work we do. Are they proxies for the cost savings or efficiencies that are gained by NGOs using technology, or the systemic impact on an NGO with our fCxO program? What indicators can we use to get a sense of this? Vinod and I had long conversations and arguments on what impact (if any?!!) the fCxO program is creating long-term change in the NGOs. My personal view (Vinod can write his own post if he wants his view known), is that this is a mid-long term change that is happening and will happen, and while we cannot see it very starkly, I do believe that there is a significant impact over time of this work
  • People were a bit concerned about the proposed work with the government. While we do believe it is important to ensure our systems get deployed and work at scale, we plan to do this via our NGO and funder partners and not directly. An interesting conversation with Vaishali (from Veddis foundation) was on how we can ensure that the program continues and is deeply embedded within the government ecosystem for a long time, rather than disappearing when the NGO and we transition out. There are not too many successful examples of this happening currently, but lots of NGOs are trying it, and we probably should collaborate to share learning, approaches and maybe even vendors.
  • People were excited about our AI Cohort and how we are developing the AI platform. Most funders now just get it and are in total agreement with building for the sector rather than with the NGO
• We also had a few long meetings with 3 amazing NGOs: Educate Girls, Magic Bus and Jai Vakeel Foundation. EG and MB are amongst the largest NGOs in India, so it was really good to see what they are focusing on, some of their pain points and more importantly, how we could work with them so we can help them and also incorporate the learnings into our platforms, so others can benefit. The amount of innovation at the tech and AI level that Jayant R (CEO of MB) is driving with MB is mind-blowing, and we can away from that meeting with a sense of awe. Our goal is to get more NGOs to think and act that way from an innovation and iteration perspective
• One final thought, in a weird way (aka murphy’s law), in 4 different conversations, the topic of bringing a few leaders (and their CTOs if there is one) to talk all things tech, data and AI and discuss common areas of interest, pain points, approaches for funding and more. Highly likely we will take action on this and have an event sometime in the next couple of months.