In this episode of the People First Podcast, we explore the LEADS program, an innovative ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ initiative reshaping project design and implementation. Listen to insights from Arianna Legovini, Director for Development Impact at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, William Brent, Chief Marketing Officer at Husk Power Systems, and specialists who share their experiences and collaborative efforts in sectors like energy, health, and education.
Through these conversations, learn how LEADS is promoting learning across different sectors, using global evidence, and improving impact evaluation to achieve meaningful development results in Western and Central Africa.
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Arianna Legovini: "What really inspires me is the opportunity to make a difference and especially save lives. It was back during the Roll Back Malaria that I had this incredible experience. We were experimenting at the national level, in Zambia, with different distribution systems to ensure the clinics had the right medicines to treat patients. We were able to save, in the treatment group, 4000 children. This experience was very touching for me, and since then, we have developed so many solutions that go exactly in the same direction."
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Rama George: Hello and welcome to People First Podcast, the podcast from the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ where we explore the stories, ideas, and people shaping Western and Central Africa. I¡¯m your host, Rama George. Today, we¡¯re diving into a program that¡¯s changing the way the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡ªand its partners¡ªdesign and deliver impact: the LEADS program.
Imagine this: a single workshop in Togo brings together project teams from across Western and Central Africa as well as government counterparts. They share knowledge, apply global evidence, and¡ªby the end of the week¡ªhave generated millions in added value for their joint projects in the pipeline. That¡¯s the real-world impact of LEADS: Learn. Adapt. Scale.
But what is LEADS exactly, and why does it matter?
In the global development context, we face a big challenge: there¡¯s a wealth of evidence and learning out there, but it doesn¡¯t always make its way into the projects that need it most. Too often, teams work in silos, and proven solutions don¡¯t get scaled.
That¡¯s where the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s LEADS program comes in.
LEADS is a program designed to do many things:
- Integrate global evidence into project design and implementation,
- Foster cross-sector learning and knowledge exchange,
- Build capacity for impact evaluation,
- And, ultimately, help the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ achieve greater development impact.
LEADS does this by providing curated, evidence-based insights, facilitating knowledge exchange between sectors and countries, and offering practical tools for monitoring and evaluation.
From Lom¨¦, Togo, we are participating in one of their workshops. This is organized in collaboration with the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s Western and Central Africa Region, the Development Economics Vice Presidency and the International Finance Corporation.
I am joined today by Arianna Legovini, the Director for Development Impact at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.
Hello Arianna, welcome to the People First Podcast!
Arianna Legovini: Pleasure being with you.
Rama George: What¡¯s behind this LEADS workshop, and what is so exciting and different about this approach?
Arianna Legovini: First of all, I'm thrilled about expanding to West and Central Africa.
We run these big workshops in different regions to inject a lot of lessons into our projects and have a conversation around what is relevant to improve the effectiveness of these projects.
Let's talk about M300. We want to connect people with energy. Is that sufficient or do we really need to think about reliability, which is the quality of that energy. So here, we do not only have clients coming to the workshop, but TTLs and management from the region, both from the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and the IFC, with the idea that we can use both the knowledge and the financing to scale solutions that work across the whole region.
Rama George: Mission 300 and energy access. Yesterday, we spoke with William Brent, the Chief Marketing Officer at Husk Power Systems. Here is what he shared with us about his company and why they are here, in Lom¨¦, for the LEADS workshop.
William Brent: So Husk Power, my company, builds mini grids. Everybody who grew up in a city knows what a grid is. It's a bunch of wires. Bunch of poles. There's an energy source for that thing somewhere, which we never see. Mini grids are for communities that live off of that main grid, mostly in rural areas. My company, Husk, builds a mini grid in those communities. So, we're trying to bring them into the modern economy, by giving them access to energy as well as services on top of that energy.
Rama George: Have you faced any challenges in this business? Trying to sell off grid systems?
William Brent: Oh, there's plenty of challenges in building a mini grid. I think one of them is just the logistics of actually doing it and the communities that we serve. I mean, these are places that are, out in the middle of nowhere. So, it's hard to get there. And then, you know, you have to source talent locally and train that talent. So, we go into these communities as a community member, hire 3 to 4 people. We train them, to do sales, technical support, security, etc.. So we're contributing to the local economy, not just by providing electricity to people who didn't have before but also hiring locals to do that.
Rama George: Why does it make sense for you to participate in these kinds of workshops?
William Brent: If we can do a deep study around how the services that we provide, including electricity, but also things on top of that, actually deliver great, greater socioeconomic impact to communities that we're electrifying versus grid extension, that helps us. It helps governments understand why it makes sense for them to allocate more of their finances to support us, provides the customer with better service. And it also, you know, unlocks hopefully a lot more private capital, like the capital is coming from IFC to scale the solution. So, there¡¯s a lot of reasons why having more data that¡¯s credible, that¡¯s based on third party assessments, would go a long way to helping our industry scale, help government understand why taking the path of the mini grid, not just, grid extension, is important.
Rama George: Would you recommend this kind of workshop to other energy companies or what messages would you share for future participants?
William Brent: This type of workshop can be really valuable for private sector companies. We need support from partners, like IFC and the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, to make the case for how we can scale impactful solutions like mini grids. And you can't really do that unless you've got the data to back it up. We know what we want to do. We know what the outcome is that we're trying to achieve. We know what data we need to collect. We think we have the framework to do that.
Rama George: Arianna, you¡¯ve heard from the private sector. What¡¯s an example of support for government implementing agencies?
Arianna Legovini: We developed a dashboard for government officials to see their data in real time, allowing the authorities to think about fiscal support or other interventions. So, the sky's the limit because we are always doing everything in collaboration with the client.
Rama George: Right! You just spoke about fiscal policy and here is Raymond Muhula. He is a Lead public sector specialist based in Accra, Ghana. Let¡¯s ask him what problem his team is trying to solve? How and why?
Raymond Muhula: We invest in really sophisticated technology to monitor public expenditure or to monitor revenues. But sometimes you find that the uptake of these systems is not optimal. We have the system there, but only a few people use it up to a certain extent. These problems can be solved if we test things first.
Rama George: Raymond, what has surprised you most about this workshop?
Raymond Muhula: I've found that most of the talking is done by government officials. I think that is really amazing. It's been really humbling to see that, people who really know a lot about these things are willing to just listen.
Rama George: What is one of your main takeaways?
Raymond Muhula: I think for the broader development community, we need to test things before we invest in them. And I think the similar message also for government. For the Bank, for operation teams, is that we need to embed more evidence and more behavior and more data into our projects. As Task Team Leaders, we have the opportunity during the design to incorporate this. Nobody says, don't do this.
Rama George: There¡¯s also another angle to LEADS that we¡¯d like to talk about. It¡¯s the collaboration and work in multiple sectors. For that, we spoke with Fatima Barry who is a Senior Health Specialist, based here, in Lom¨¦. She talked about her project, the Sub-Saharan Women Empowerment and Demographic Dividend Plus Project¡ªknown by many as SWEDD+. Here she is.
Fatima Barry: We're really excited to be part of the AFW LEADS. We work a lot with the education, the social protection and jobs Practice Group. We're also working with the agricultural team, to support women, to really help, really inform their economic growth from adolescent girls from the age of, around ten, 12 up until 49.
The intervention that we've been discussing here at AFW LEADS is around, what they call in Togo, a school for a second chance. It's for girls, young girls who, have not been able to finish school. And so, some of the studies have shown that with vocational training girls can really build the skills that they need and be part of the job market.
If we don't build the evidence around some of these interventions, we won't be able to really understand if what we're doing is impactful.
Rama George: Coming back to you, Arianna, what¡¯s next for LEADS?
Arianna Legovini: So, after the workshop, we'll have to have a lot of follow up to the countries to help them operationalize the evidence that has been introduced. We'll continue tracking changes during implementation.
On average, our promise is to increase their impact as measured through treatment and control by at least 50%.
Rama George: Let me ask you one more thing: how do you reach out to many more people?
Arianna Legovini: So to reach out to many more people in the world, we have developed an exciting tool. It's called impact AI. The idea of impact AI is to use generative AI chat box, but upgrade it with an AI agent and a structured database of 7000 randomized controlled trials, to provide practitioners with direct access to the evidence, synthesize the evidence for them in very easy to read forest plots and be able to map which interventions what impact on what outcome, and be able to provide information not only on what they can expect from a certain intervention and investment, but also how to optimize that investment by picking features that can help them improve the impact of their programs.
I should say we are also working on a predictive tool, so you¡¯ll be able to actually get an estimate of what your project may deliver within your context and given a certain features. So, this information will not only be available to the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, but also the government, also to civil society organizations, pressure groups. So, kind of keeping everybody accountable for doing better.
Rama George: Is it free?
Arianna Legovini: It will be free, of course. Yes. It's, like Open Access!
Rama George: So, what can we learn from LEADS? First, integrating global evidence into local projects isn¡¯t just possible¡ªit¡¯s transformative. Second, cross-sector learning and collaboration are key to scaling what works. And finally, building capacity for impact evaluation helps ensure that every project is making a real difference.
I'm Rama George, and you've been listening to a special episode of the People First podcast featuring the LEADS program. If you want to learn more about this program, or get involved, visit the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳¡¯s website or reach out to the LEADS team. We¡¯ll put the details in the transcript.
That¡¯s it for today¡¯s episode. On behalf of the production team, thank you for listening, and remember: learning, adapting, and scaling can change the world¡ªone project at a time.
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About People First Podcast
provides a human angle to concrete development topics as they affect people in Western and Central Africa. It also features ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ project and initiatives. Join us for a sustainable and inclusive development!
About ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group
ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Group is one of the world's largest sources of funding and knowledge for low-income countries. Its five institutions share a commitment to reducing poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development.