Conceptualising the “Township Innovation System” eKasi and township development programmes

1. Conceptualising the “Township Innovation System” eKasi and township development programmes Geci Karuri-Sebina, PhD Candidate, geci@ieri.org.za Frontiers of research, practice and policy: International Innovation for Development Symposium 26 February 2010, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

2. Outline • The Township Category • SA responses • NDPG and TCSHSS • Some concerns • AI & IS: new specs () for old problems? • Introducing the investigation

5. Overall city level Internal city level Settlement level ExampleTshwane’s local settlements – TCSHSS typology

7. Issues • Poverty traps • Unemployment higher than SA & city/town averages (50%, 70%, 80%...) • Increase in urban household incomes lower than average • Significant local buying power leakage from local economy • Poorly performing residential property markets • Undiversified & marginal economy • Structural disadvantage • Development investment basic (if any) and minimal • Social unrest

8. There has been some policy reference… • Urban Development Framework (1997) • National Spatial Development Perspective (2003, 2006) • National Framework for Local Economic Development in South Africa (2006) • Second Economy strategy framework (2009)

9. There have been several area-based initiatives over the years… • Special Integrated Presidential Projects (1994-2004) • Urban Renewal Programme (2001-2011) • Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programmes (2001-2011) • Urban Development Zones (2004-2014) • Neighbourhood Development Partnership Programme (2006-2017)

10. But the challenges have persisted…

11. Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant Conceptual Framework 11. Contribute NDP Economic Activity 8. Stimulate 10. Improve • Fund • Manage • Support 6. Attract Leveraged Investments (Private & Public) 7. Enable 2. Attract 4. Deliver NDPG (muni) Physical Improvements QOL 9. Improve Township-focusedArea-based Dev & Long-range strat 3. Stimulate 5. Coordinate / Deliver Viable & sustainable neighbourhoods 1. Fund R10 billion, 10 years, 57 municipalities, 90 programmes, 260 townships

12. Economic Social Financial NDPG Strategic Objectives: • To attract private sector investment • To consolidate and co-ordinate quality public sector spending • To provide institutional & development capacity • To direct capital investment into projects • To promote knowledge, best practice, innovation & advocacy

13. Support & Develop Local Economies Regional or rural catchment area Township or metropolitan catchment area Neighbourhood catchment area Node

14. Funding components

15. NDPG projects are fairly generic… • Public parks & recreational spaces • Public transport facilities – bus, taxi stops, ranks & pedestrian links • Trading facilities & infrastructure for lease/development as commercial premises (retail & services) • Township restructuring & development projects towards nodal concentration of investment & community activities • Refurbishment, upgrading, extension & conversion of any public facility that will lead to private sector investment • Etc… • (+Lucrative consultancies! 10% of R10bn)

16. 8 years and R2m later… No indications about grassroots potential, no steering committee, community studies not completed, no “for people” programmes referred, no critical institutional analysis despite the experience of the initiative itself…

17. “economic development normatively seeks to improve the quality of living of a country’s population. Its scope therefore includes the process and policies by which a country improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people. In the main however, economic development refers to social and technological progress. It implies a change in the way goods and services are produced, not merely an increase in production achieved using the same old, inappropriate methods of production on a wider scale” Maharajh, Sall, Karuri-Sebina (2010)

18. “In essentialist terms, we could say that the social economy at the neighbourhood level contains those agents and their neighbourhood networks that are involved in local production, allocation and domestic activity in which ethical principles of (re)distribution, reciprocity and sustainability determine their social organisation. • In holistic terms, the social economy receives a more realist institutional content, including the historical trajectories of economic functions, modes of social organisation, local institutions with multiscalar linkages and rules of collective action, which are partly the outcome of social and political struggle… • The institutions that have grown up with these activities and their modes of social organisation are part-and-parcel of the holistic definition of the neighbourhood social economy, developed as a typology of variants around a context-proof analytical pattern. Ethical principles are no longer the deus ex machina for urban renaissance, but are part of the local development history.” Moulaert, Frank & Nussbaumer, Jacques (2005)

19. What about… • “Cutting the red tape” – Batho Pele principles • Obstacles to growing local entrepreneurs / small business • Unique local assets / capacities: • Unique Language: nurture in indigenous context (e.g. in GP many township residents speak 4-10 languages; any potential here or draw the capacity into university linguistic labs and consulting firms’ repertoires? • Hairdressing: support industry where it is rife, or formalise into malls where we pay more for less quality • Repairs and recycling: only reliant on an inconvenient and sometimes mal-incentivised formal industry closes shop rather than • Endogenous merits: social capital, cultural variety, different modes of production and consumption, efficiencies of informality • Figuring out how to increase impact – or at least getting more money in the hands of the poor than in the hands of those who we hope will include the poor?

20. More fundamentally… • Do these interventions have a chance of transforming townships into a “developed” state within the foreseeable future? Within the next 50 years? • How can the programmesrealist-ically (beyond being merely idealistic or empiricist) engage with the complexity of contexts + asymmetries + actors + linkages +++ ? • What relevant knowledge can be brought to bear in concrete ways?

21. M4P? • Making markets work for the poor • Making markets out of thepoor • “Transforming markets into something that has any hope in hell of ever seriously improving the condition of the poor” (TM4P) • Team “for the poor”? (TM4P)

22. (by the way…) • Not a question of private- versus public –led socioeconomic development • Both public and private have a role to play • Both can be inefficient and ineffective • Corruption is a partnership activity! • Both need to be seriously exploring ways to be more efficient and effective

23. How we frame questions… What are the major constraintsfor innovation processes at community level? How can agentshelpcommunities to overcomethese constraints? 1st GRA-WORLD BANK WORKSHOP ON INNOVATION SYSTEMS AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL “Touching the Hearts of the People” Kuala Lumpur, 6-8 February 2006

24. Appreciative alternative? “In its broadest focus, [Appreciative Inquiry] involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential” Cooperrider and Whitney

25. IS – a systemic view • “the system of innovation is constituted by elements and relationships which interact in the production, diffusion and use of new, and economically useful, knowledge” Lundvall, 1992 OECD

26. Is a Township Innovation System “TIS” category useful for… • Describing the township socio-economy in new, holistic terms – recognising a unique typology and valorising its endogenous potential? • Evolving concrete measurement approaches for classifying and assessing the state and performance of township economies in context? • Creating new understandings / knowledge of township socio-economy which could contribute to the improvement of the design, implementation, or assessment of policies and programmes aimed at township development (e.g. the NDPG)?

27. 1. Describing TIS • Eerste Fabrieke Node, Mamelodi • Interpreting the endogenous innovation system using AI techniques • Mixed-method: • Participant observation • Interviews • Small surveys (cluster innovation) • Meta-evaluation • Secondary data

28. 2. Measuring TIS • Established systems for innovation system measurement and their systemic indicators : • Focus on formal (registered) enterprises • Tend to seek out artifacts that are codified in order to assess innovativity in a formal context • Are essentialist, being context-neutral and embedded within a particular orthodoxy about socio-economic development • Identify / explore relevant measurement parameters

29. 3. Compare to improve understanding - from NDPG TIS

30. 3. Compare to improve understanding - to NDPG TIS

31. Summary: TIS Study

32. Traditional views of urban development often assume, consciously or unconsciously, that actual processes of urban change are either natural evolutionary or inevitable outcomes of theoretically imagined processes. This of course often leads to an unreal portrayal of processes of urban development. • The neo-liberal urban development discourse is a case in point: it abstracts away from the actual development trajectories of each specific urban case and tends to overlook the fact that development is deeply historical, place-specific and embedded within specific and concrete institutional settings. It also confuses ‘discourse’ with theory and theory with reality, taking its ‘explanatory’ factors of economic growth and progress as actual descriptors of the way urban economies and societies develop. Moulaert, 2007

33. Contact Details Geci Karuri-Sebina Tel: 072 148 1132 geci@ieri.org.za geci.karuri-sebina@treasury.gov.za