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BLOG
Commentary, opinion, and stories from across the SIVIO network on governance, civic life, and development in Africa.
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Empowering Futures: Local Actions, Global Impact
Advancing Education and Youth Empowerment Philanthropy has been instrumental in advancing education and empowering Africa’s youth. By supporting scholarships, school infrastructure development, and teacher training programs, philanthropy has expanded access to quality education, particularly in remote and marginalized areas. These initiatives have empowered young individuals, enabling them to break free from the cycle of poverty and contribute positively to their communities and the continent. Philanthropists such as Strive and Tsitsi Masiiwa have been instrumental in providing education to the less privileged but talented youngsters in Zimbabwe and beyond. Again, like many other HNWIs, they have a foundation, the Higher Life…
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A letter from the Philanthropy & Communities Centre Coordinator
Hello! My name is Shelly Satuku the Coordinator for the Centre for Philanthropy and Communities at SIVIO Institute. Welcome to our special issue on African Philanthropy. Our Centre for Philanthropy and Communities exists to foster philanthropy in its various forms across Africa. Our work initially focused on Zimbabwe, but we have since lunged into the region. We dream big, we dare to see the rise and expansion of African development enshrined in the concepts of African philanthropy. This year we are focusing on our “Big Bet”, casting the spotlight on engaged communities. We seek to enhance what people are doing…
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Reimagine What Life Can Look Like on the ‘What If’ Series
The ‘What if’ series hosted by Tendai Murisa, which started in 2023 is back in 2024. The series is a collection of podcasts that ‘reimagines our being and life conditions’. Tendai Murisa hosts this podcast alongside Nonstiklelo Nzula. In this season of ‘What if’ we start with a conversation on the ‘Big Bet‘ talking about engaged communities and the strength of associational life in African communities where political parties and even the concept of democracy has not delivered on it promises to citizens. This episode was inspired by an article written by Tendai Murisa setting the pace for the strategic…
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Laying the Groundwork for Small Business Successes, from Zimbabwe to Kenya
Originally Posted by Anne Stopper from the Mozilla Foundation: Laying the Groundwork for Small Business Successes, from Zimbabwe to Kenya – Mozilla Foundation The SIVIO Institute is a Mozilla IRL Fund Awardee. It has developed a tool to measure the effectiveness of financial inclusion policies aimed at Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) – a critical first step in ensuring the success of smaller businesses. We spoke with Executive Director Tendai Murisa and Project Coordinator Belinda Chaora about how the organization is expanding its work from Zimbabwe to Zambia, Malawi, and Kenya The Issue Over the past two decades, African MSMEs have…
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Full blog – The Big Bet: Engaged Communities
The Big Bet 2024: Engaged Communities The discussion on the assets within communities is slowly disappearing from Development discourse, thanks to a preoccupation with state behaviour. Our big bet this year is on engaged citizens working collectively in communities and establishing associations are vital conditions for democracy and inclusive development to thrive. We will spend time trying to unravel how local associations work and the ways in which they contribute towards, on the one hand, an inclusive development framework and on the other hand, how they contribute towards local democracy. We don’t do this just for the sake of analysis. Rather, we…
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The Big Bet – Engaged Communities!
Over the last six years we have worked in several African countries. We have observed that overall, governments are failing to meet the expectations and desires of the of citizens in most African countries. We analysed Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia as critical case studies regularly assessing the performance of their governments versus what their citizens want. It is evident to see that in these and other countries’ governments are performing below average; inequality is increasing and rarely do they have the capacity to sustainably turn around on their election promises. The result is deepening inequality, growing poverty, and growing dissatisfaction…
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The SIVIO Institute Relaunch of ZIMCITIZENSWATCH Platform
We are pleased to inform all our partners about the relaunch of the ZimCitizensWatch platform. The platforms’ relaunch on February 9, 2024, marks a significant milestone for us, because of all our platforms it is the one that directly links the actions of a government with the concerns or desires of citizens. As you know our work is centered around the needs, activities and operations of citizens with and alongside their government. No development can truly take place if citizens and governments are not working together. This platform tracks the activities of the Zimbabwean government from the appointment of the…
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We’ve Published our 2023 Annual Report
On the 1st of February 2024 we published our 2023 Annual report. This report is a review of the activities we conducted in the 2023. The report demonstrates the progress we made since our inception in 2018. The volume of work we have undertaken has increased; our team has taken on more exciting work and we are seeing more impact through the communities we work with. Of key importance is the alignment with our regional growth objectives. In our 2021 strategy, we committed to expand our operations into the wider African continent. In this report, our progress is evident. We…
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Lessons Learnt: the policy advocacy lab experiment
Leveraging Advocacy Labs to Solve the Public Problem of (UN)-Employment Reflections by Matron Muchena Introduction I am an Associate at SIVIO Institute. My responsibilities include the day-to-day coordination of several activities within the Centre for Civic Engagement. In our centre, we have, since (26 August 2023) been experimenting with the idea of advocacy labs. The big idea is to make sure that we broaden participation of ordinary citizens in processes of advocacy. We currently have three labs on (i) unemployment in Zimbabwe, (ii) corruption and (iii) price instability. My reflections in this blog focus on the Advocacy Lab on (un)employment.…
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Africa Giving and Shared Responsibility
Last week on Friday, we SIVIO Institute launched our 2023 signature initiative – AfricaGiving. It has been a long and challenging but exciting journey to get here and there is still a long journey ahead. AfricaGiving is many things to different people, on the one hand, it is about our culture, and what defines us as a people. Bheki Moyo and Tade Aina in their seminal edited book summarised our existence elegantly as comprising of ‘giving to help and helping to give.’ We go a step further and suggest that giving is our essence-we give to live and live to give. Perhaps this is…
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