Rural Enterprise and Economic Development in Southern Africa
For the youth…
…and for the future
…and for the future
REEDiSA equips techno-socio-economic development champions across Southern Africa — combining our incubator establishment, training and skills development support, the TouchAfrica™ expert system and MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research & learning) offerings across a range of industries.
How we workWe are a team of Africans of all shapes, sizes and colours that have travelled a bumpy, living-lab and action-learning road from being technologists to becoming social-enterprise developers — from developing and providing ICT systems for development to a “development through enterprise” approach with warm-blooded, technology-equipped, human networks. In our world multi-purpose and integration are important ingredients for sustainability — service delivery, in rural areas specifically, should cater for economies of “scope” and not economies of “scale”. This provides a wide range of services over the same cost structures. Meet the team →
Our networks are mostly deployed in the contexts of local or traditional authorities, and for this reason we have developed a decision framework for local economic and enterprise development (LEED) planning. This focus is reflected in our name, REEDiSA. Our systemic approach finds the sweet spot in the overlapping fields of human behaviour (“People”), enterprise development (“Organisation”), the geographic and historic context (“Environment”) and technology application (“Technology”) — the POET Model.
We establish and sustain rural incubators — and back them with the training, tools and evidence they need to work in the real world.
Rural incubators that support technology demonstration, learning and extension (advisory) services, as well as enterprise and economic development.
Curriculum, mentoring and practical up-skilling — including our training and CEA programmes.
Our low-cost, bandwidth-friendly electronic performance support system for enterprise-development networks.
Monitoring, evaluation, research & learning — so interventions are measured, learned from and improved.
These capabilities apply across a range of industries — agriculture is our current frontline, not our only one.
Our team has more than 200 combined years of experience in the research, development and implementation of technology-intensive, science-rich solutions for development-through-enterprise in Southern Africa — acknowledging and incorporating the indigenous knowledge systems of local people.
The POET Model → designs systems forward and evaluates them backward: People, Organisation, Environment, Technology.
Self-sustaining, multi-sphere social-enterprise networks to support “development through enterprise”. We see an entrepreneur as someone who spots opportunities, mobilises resources, takes on risk, creates value and drives change — a creator of value who takes initiative to bring new ideas into reality.
We design, enable and support networks of (young) social entrepreneurs in under-serviced areas: extending the reach of public, private and non-profit organisations to the base of the pyramid; capturing and distributing indigenous knowledge and learning (see our publications); and opening export & import channels for community products and services.
To be custodians of creation and to disciple others to do the same; and to learn how to bring wholeness to people and teach them to pass it on — so that those at the fringes of our world can be brought into the centre.
A short film from our work in the Limpopo Province.
From Mo Ibrahim’s address at the 11th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
Techno-socio-economic Research, Development and Implementation Practitioners.
