Speech by Neville Gabriel, Executive Director, Southern Africa Trust at the launch of the call for nominations for the 2010 Drivers of Change awards
Gaborone, Botswana
30 March, 2010
Your Honour, the Vice President of Botswana; Lt. Gen. Mompati Merafhe;
Your Excellencies, Heads of Mission and Representatives of Regional and International Institutions;
Alice Mogwe; Trustee of Southern Africa Trust;
Secretaries General of SATUCC, the EJN of FOCCISA, and SADC-CNGO;
Representative of the SADC Secretariat;
Representatives of civil society organisations and the business community;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen.
There are three kinds of people in life: Those that make things happen; those that watch things happen; and those who don’t know what’s happening.
Tonight is all about those people who make things happen. The launch of the call for nominations for the 2010 Drivers of Change awards is a call to them to come forward and share ideas on how they are changing the future of our region for the better.
Your Hounour, Vice President Merafhe, thank you for joining us tonight despite the many competing demands for your time. We have come to Gaborone in search of individuals and organisations that are driving change in the way things are done across the southern Africa region.
For the Southern Africa Trust, the past four years of the Drivers of Change awards has been a very rewarding journey. Rewarding in the sense that the drivers of change that have been recognised through the awards, have all demonstrated a new kind of leadership in our collective efforts to overcome poverty in southern Africa – a leadership characterised by visionary innovation, partnerships with others, and practical results. The awards have identified and profiled outstanding drivers of systemic change in our region – each in their own spheres of influence. Not initiatives that are temporary or superficial, but efforts that drive deep and lasting change – that transform the way our societies work against poverty.
Future generations are at risk of walking the path of poverty and inequality like this generation. It is our historic task to act together now to change that legacy. We must better co-ordinate our efforts against poverty and find new models and strategies that work more effectively to overcome poverty. That means everyone in our region has a role to play.
We have been particularly inspired over the past two days here in Gaborone, by the excellent efforts of the churches, trade unions, and NGOs through their regional apex organisations, to strengthen their regional cooperation through the formal establishment of an alliance so that there can be better leadership of civil society engagement with SADC on the key challenges facing our region. Similarly, our consultation dialogue this afternoon with civil society organisations in Botswana brought to the fore the remarkable efforts being made by so many groups and the need to better coordinate and strengthen those initiatives so that they have a bigger impact.
The Drivers of Change awards provide a platform to raise inspiring examples of how this is already beginning to happen across our region.
The awards are presented in 4 categories: civil society, government, business, and individual.
Since the time we took the first step in 2006 to launch the awards in partnership with the Mail & Guardian’s Investing in the Future awards; 14 drivers of change from seven different countries have been honoured, including Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia. These Drivers of Change were selected from a total of 160 nominations received from all SADC countries with the exception of Botswana and Seychelles. Following this launch here tonight, it is our hope that there will be many nominations from Botswana this year and beyond.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I believe that the best way to understand what the awards are about will be to look to the previous winners. So please allow me to highlight some our outstanding drivers of change over the years:
The inaugural winner was an individual who inspired the lives of many people in Mozambique and throughout southern Africa who work to end poverty. Dr José Negrão was a professor of Development Economics at the University of Eduardo Mondlane and was a founding member of Cruzeiro do Sul, a research institute addressing a wide range of issues including poverty and rural development. His seminal work to establish the national poverty observatory in Mozambique as a standing platform for shared visioning, dialogue, planning, and implementation of a national development plan by civil society organisations and the government together has made a remarkable impact on the development path of Mozambique. Dr Negrão was named a Driver of Change in 2006.
In 2007, a special Drivers of Change award went jointly to the Ministry of Planning and Development of the Mozambique government and the Group of 20 for their outstanding and creative partnership to overcome poverty in Mozambique.
In the business category, Allan Gray was recognised as a driver of change for his efforts to promote job creation by fostering excellence in entrepreneurship through both funding and education. Mr Gray took the bold step of annually committing an unprecedented proportion of his company’s profits to the Orbis Foundation to do this work over a long term, challenging the way that other corporates practice their social responsibility.
The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) was honoured as the winner in the civil society category for linking sound conversation practices directly with supporting sustainable livelihoods for poor fishing communities that share water resources across Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia, and for supporting the voices of the poor to be heard in government policy development processes across the three countries.
In 2008, the winner in the business category was the Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS (ALAFA) for its innovative sector wide public-private-community partnership that is showing how possible it is to protect key productive economic sectors in poor countries from the ravages of HIV and AIDS – through cooperation between different businesses in a sector, with workers, the government, and development agencies.
In the civil society category, the award went to the Lusaka based Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection for its simply powerful basic needs basket survey. The annual “basic needs basket” initiative is an innovative monthly survey of how much it costs a family of six for its basic food and other essentials compared against the income of an average household. The results of the survey, which is conducted by ordinary members communities at the local level across Zambia, continues to have a powerful influence on budget and other policy instruments in Zambia.
A joint special award went to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Mauritius and the Mauritius Council of Social Service (MACOSS) for driving a major change to how regional priorities to overcome poverty are set in the region, by involving business, civic groups, and governments together through the SADC Summit on Poverty and Development that was held in Mauritius in 2008. The outcome was the agreement by SADC to establish a regional poverty observatory and develop a regional poverty reduction strategy.
In the individual category, the visionary Richard Mkandawire from Malawi was recognised for his outstanding leadership in convincing African leaders and the international community that Africa can muster the ability and political will to overcome hunger and poverty through a green revolution for food security. The results of his work are being felt by poor communities who are more food secure in many parts of the continent.
In 2009, 4 Drivers of Change were recognised for demonstrating a new kind of leadership for real and lasting development in our region. In the civil society category, the Luanda Urban Poverty Programme (LUPP) was recognised for driving systemic change in the way poverty reduction programmes are run in Angola, through a fresh approach to cooperation between state and non-state actors that others have struggled to achieve. LUPP is building participatory governance and more effective delivery of housing and basic services such as water to over 400,000 of Luanda’s poorest citizens.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
These drivers of change have created a path for us. Let us draw lessons from their journey and keep on walking. I thank you for your attention, but for the other winners from last year, I now invite you to watch the screen...
(Roll visuals of the 2009 Drivers of Change winners – Eastern Cape Red Meat Project / WBHO; Ndungane; Mutharika)
