Jite Phido is a senior program manager on the scaling innovations team at Results for Development (R4D), where she manages the equity and inclusion, and systems innovation thematic areas at R4D’s International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA) secretariat. She additionally manages IDIA’s global innovation advisors program, a network of technical experts, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs and system disruptors from low- and middle-income countries who share IDIA’s priorities and objectives, and use their expertise and experience to improve IDIA’s work.

Throughout her career, Jite has focused on participatory approaches to development that leverage community participation and inclusion. She has designed media interventions that have reached over 25 million Nigerians across the country in six languages. Her multimedia policy research on the role of community health workers in driving equitable health access for the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale project won an award from the Development Research and Projects Center in Nigeria. As a bridge fellow with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Jite was seconded as the technical assistant to the Women Affairs Thematic Working Group, supporting the federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development’s work mainstreaming gender equity and social inclusion in health, education, livelihoods and governance, into the federal government of Nigeria Medium Term National Development Plan (2021-2025), a historical first for a Nigerian national plan.

Prior to joining R4D, Jite was an Atlantic fellow for social and economic equity based at the London School of Economics’ International Inequalities Institute, where her focus of study was on gender equity and dominant media narratives and discourses around how marginalized people make claims and challenge power for a more just world. Before that, she was the program director at ARDA Development Communication Inc, a leading development communication non-profit based in Lagos, Nigeria, where she worked with local and international donors, partners, clients, government agents, civil society, and communities to design and produce radio programs, videos, distance learning toolkits, participatory theatre productions, print IECs, IVR solutions, and mobile applications that addressed Nigeria’s endemic inequalities through advocacy and by targeting barriers to systems change and increasing access to information, services, networks, and social inclusion.

Ms. Phido holds an M.Sc. in inequalities and social science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MPH in global maternal and child health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a B.A. in biology with a minor concentration in French from Clark University.

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As director Centre for Sustainable Health Innovations, Singapore she leads the tripartite InnovationS for UHC Collaborative to catalyze south-south dialogues around leveraging low-cost technological innovations and new models of healthcare in Asia and Africa. She is also co-founder of the Mutual Learning Platform for Mixed Health Systems launched in 2020 in response to the COVID 19 pandemic that convenes the private sector and public health stakeholders for evidence sharing and building interventional capacity for stronger health systems. Her projects on health technology includes a partnership with the Consortia of Affordable Technologies (CamTech) which mentors and seed-funds early stage social impact health innovations in Asia and Africa and the Grand Challenges Grant winner, the Biodiaspora Partnership that tracks and models infectious and vector borne disease through human movement patterns.

As senior public health scientist at the Public Health Foundation of India, she directs the Universal Health Coverage Initiative part of one of India’s seminal health policy exercises on health system reform. She was secretariat director for the government of India’s High Level Expert Group recommendations on universal health coverage, part of the country’s 12th Five Year Plan.

Dr. Balasubramaniam has authored several reports, policy briefs as well as peer-reviewed publications over her career as both a clinician and researcher. She works closely with municipal and state governments regionally and served on a taskforce on primary healthcare constituted Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, government of India and was a member of the technical review group on urban health constituted by the Ministry of Urban Development. She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Health Governance, was recently appointed to the editorial board of the newly launched Oxford Open Journal of Infrastructure and Health, and is regional editorial advisor to Oxford University Press’s Healthy Cities and Communities Encyclopaedia. Dr. Balasubramaniam holds visiting faculty positions at the National University of Singapore and the Keenan Research Centre, Toronto, Canada. She is a frequent advisor on health systems and policy to numerous multi-bi lateral organizations including WHO, IDRC Canada, the European Commission, the World Bank, the Wellcome Trust, USAID, DfID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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At Results for Development (R4D), Mrs. Ajeigbe work closely with the Innovation practice team to devise and execute strategies and systems that support operational excellence, improve strategic budgeting and resource management, program management and quality control, business development, team-building, and human resources strategy. Some of the projects she works on include the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA), FCDO- Frontier Tech Hub, among others.

Some of Mrs. Ajeigbe’s major career achievements include restructuring an organization’s financial processes and procedures that had a major impact on delivery of their objectives. She also formulated and developed financial models and tools for government-funded startup projects.

Before joining R4D, Mrs. Ajeigbe worked with national not-for-profit organizations in the UK managing operational and strategic financial operations. This includes compliance to the UK Charity Commission, Companies House and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). She also worked on the Equality Justice and Alliance (EJA) Programme, funded by UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), where she managed budgets, grants and contracts.

Mrs. Ajeigbe holds a masters degree in development economics and BSc in accounting. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountant (CIMA). She speaks English and Yoruba.

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In her career, Ms. Makungu has worked with small and medium enterprises in developing countries to shape stories in agriculture, food, and nutrition. Her focus has been to coordinate the provision of technical support for small and medium enterprises, shaping, and disseminating stories of impact and growth for low-income communities.

Prior to R4D, Ms. Makungu worked for the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition where she led the development of training curriculums and coordinated program communications. Before this, she worked in research for an education firm helping to coordinate messaging to improve literacy and numeracy competencies in lower primary schools. She also previously led communications, events management, and the knowledge platform revamp for AgriFocus Kenya.

Ms. Makungu holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and media studies from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She speaks fluent Swahili and English.

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At Results for Development (R4D), Ms. Ponchia works as a program associate for the scaling innovation team. In this role, she helps coordinate the Million Lives Collective, an initiative aimed at raising awareness and supporting the scale of innovations with an impact of one million lives. She also supports working groups and task forces in the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA). Her work for IDIA includes developing a framework for the co-creation of AI (artificial intelligence) policies and programs and supporting IDIA’s market shaping and innovative finance work.

Prior to joining R4D, Ms. Ponchia was part of the governance team at the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health at the World Health Organization. In this role, she facilitated the preparation and coordination for high-level meetings and advised the partnership’s governance strategy.

Ms. Ponchia also worked as a trade officer at the British Chamber of Commerce in Mexico, where she advised British companies on doing business in Mexico. In this role, she supported several acquisitions of a Mexican retailers and specialized in Latin American trade and development.

Ms. Ponchia holds a master’s degree in international development and humanitarian emergencies from the London School of Economics, and a BA from the University of Warwick. She is a native Italian speaker, and speaks fluent English, Spanish, and French.

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Ms. Adjei is a program officer at Results for Development (R4D) for the innovation portfolio where she provides technical leadership and program management for new and ongoing projects. Supporting ecosystem-strengthening and public sector scaling, she manages existing stakeholder relationships and cultivates new country and global partnerships.

Prior to R4D, Ms. Adjei was a technical advisor at GIZ, Ghana where she provided technical assistance for the design and programmatic support of innovation hubs across the country with a pan-African focus. In this work, she built relationships with cross-sectoral partners to promote innovations and entrepreneurship. Ms. Adjei was also a trainer at ActionAid, Ghana focusing on social entrepreneurship and advocacy training for women, youth, and community groups.

Ms. Adjei holds a master’s degree in economic policy management from the University of Ghana, a BSc in business administration (banking and finance) and certification in professional consulting from the Chartered Management Institute, UK. She speaks fluent English and her native language Twi.

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Data innovations hold promise for addressing challenges across all aspects of the nutrition data value chain (DVC). The time is opportune to leverage new data sources, methods, and technology due to the increased need for high quality and real-time data brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent convenings such as the UN World Data Forum in October 2021 have also featured data innovations as a key theme to showcase the potential of new solutions.

Given the limited work around data innovations for nutrition, DataDENT conducted a landscape analysis of trends and opportunities for nutrition data innovations. We reviewed data innovations developed in or after 2015 across the following nutrition domains—diet, food security, food environment, food fortification, micronutrients, and nutrition status.

To guide our review, we first identified data innovation categories and their sub-categories which we found to be most prominent in the broader data innovation space (Figure 1). We then mapped the 60+ nutrition data innovations found in our search to these categories. We found a significant number of nutrition data innovations are mobile solutions, digitalization, or artificial intelligence. We also found the majority of innovations to be related to nutrition status and diet data, with comparatively less around food fortification data. Finally, most innovations influence the collection, analysis, and translation of data and less so which data to collect.

To read the full blog, click here.

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At Results for Development (R4D), Mr. Idris is a program officer for the innovation practice. In this role, he is the regional advisor for West Africa under the African Technology and Innovation Partnerships (ATIP) program where he works to identify innovation system strengthening priorities in Nigeria and Ghana. He also works with ecosystem actors to scale new and emerging technologies with high potential for poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

Prior to joining, R4D, Mr. Idris was a consultant with the World Health Organization (WHO) where he oversaw the scaling of the AVADAR project to seven states in Nigeria, adding over 5,000 community health workers and volunteers into the platform. He worked closely with national and subnational governments and technology partners to gather requirements to fit end user needs and local contexts. He also supported digitizing COVID-19 vaccination data for community health workers across Nigeria. As project manager with eHealth Africa, he managed innovative digital health projects like eTally, Maps design and delivery, Sokoto SET, Meningitis fixed post tracking, and GIS tracking.

Mr. Idris holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of Salford, UK and a BSc in health education from Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is a native speaker of English and Hausa and speaks basic Arabic.

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Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems

This report is an essential tool for anyone looking to understand innovation ecosystems and introduces a simple framework to help organize ecosystem strengthening interventions based around 9 goals.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA), a collaboration platform managed by Results for Development, has published a new resource, Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems. This report builds on interviews and desk research to synthesize current learning around innovation ecosystem strengthening, and also provides a framework built around nine ecosystem goals to help actors align and coordinate their approaches.

There are many definitions of an “innovation ecosystem” in use today. But, in its broadest sense, a strong or successful ecosystem is commonly defined by its ability to mobilize actors, assets and relationships to provide a supportive enabling environment for innovation and social entrepreneurship to thrive. In practice, the approaches to ecosystem strengthening tend to fall along a continuum depending on which actors, assets or relationships they emphasize. On one end there are those that emphasize building the foundations for entrepreneurship and on the other there are those that are more mission-driven.

“Innovation ecosystems are essentially communities of global and local actors who collaborate to generate, test and scale solutions to a country’s challenges. But not all ecosystems have the resources or networks in place they need to function effectively. As such, a key part of R4D’s approach is to work with country change agents to identify and address gaps and weaknesses in local innovation ecosystems so that health, education and other systems can be effectively supported by a constant locally-driven stream of new solutions and partnerships,” said Tom Feeny, senior program director of R4D’s Innovation Practice. “We hope this new report, which we co-created with both IDIA members and country partners, will be useful to a wide range of actors as they seek to define their role and contribution in strengthening innovation ecosystems.”

Strengthening innovation ecosystems has been a continuous area of interest for IDIA, since its inception in 2015. In this paper, members of the IDIA Ecosystem Strengthening Working Group came together to pool knowledge and learning to help answer the question: “What are the most effective ways in which development agencies might strengthen innovation ecosystems?” and “How might we work together to accelerate local ecosystem priorities?”

This report presents the findings of that work and includes an analysis of current definitions of ecosystem strengthening approaches as well as insights and learning from consultations with IDIA agencies and innovation ecosystem actors in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

It also introduces a simple framework to help organize ecosystem strengthening interventions based around nine goals, including: 1) building human capital, 2) access to finance, 3) supportive markets and infrastructure, 4) policies and regulations, 5) innovation culture, 6) networking assets, 7) equitable and inclusive participation, 8) pathways to scale, and 9) mobilizing a collective approach.

For each goal, the framework in this paper unpacks:

• Typical challenges that may hinder the achievement of that goal within an ecosystem.
• Strengthening strategies to mitigate or resolve those challenges.
• Ecosystem actors that are likely to have the most influence or capacity with regard to achieving that goal.
• Insights from IDIA members and partners involved with ecosystem strengthening.
• Resources for further reading.

The report was officially launched in partnership with the Government of Ghana as part of its Ghana Digital Innovation Week in November 2021.

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About the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA)
IDIA is a unique collaboration platform that brings together the senior leadership from the innovation teams, labs and departments of some of the world’s leading development agencies with the shared goal of “actively promoting and advancing innovation as a means to help achieve sustainable development.” IDIA is committed to the development of new products, services and ways of working ensuring that the lessons arising from both success and failure can be disseminated to inform the adaptation and scaling of innovations within different countries, populations and contexts. In partnership with in-country actors, IDIA is dedicated to identifying and developing models and approaches for strengthening the efficiency and effectiveness of local ecosystems to enable innovation to flourish. For more information visit www.idiainnovation.org

About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — supporting them as they navigate complex change processes to achieve large-scale, equitable outcomes in health, education and nutrition. We work with country leaders to diagnose challenges, co-create, innovate and implement solutions built on evidence and diverse stakeholder input, and engage in learning to adapt, iterate and improve. We also strengthen global, regional and country ecosystems to support country leaders with expertise, evidence, and innovations. R4D helps country leaders solve their immediate challenges today, while also strengthening systems and institutions to address tomorrow’s challenges. And we share what we learn so others around the world can achieve results for development, too. www.R4D.org

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This report presents the findings of that work and includes an analysis of current definitions of ecosystem strengthening approaches as well as insights and learning from consultations with IDIA agencies and innovation ecosystem actors in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is an essential tool for anyone looking to understand innovation ecosystems, and also introduces a simple framework to help organize ecosystem strengthening interventions based around 9 goals.

The report was officially launched in partnership with the Government of Ghana as part of its Ghana Digital Innovation Week in November 2021.

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