Category: Malawi

Norec-SDI Youth Exchange Launches KYC TV Podcast Series

When Flora Alick from KYC TV Malawi arrived at the SDI Secretariat in Cape Town for a five-month Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (Norec) youth media exchange, she carried with her the stories of communities on the frontlines of climate change. By October 2025, she had launched Voices From The Frontline, a new podcast series exploring how federations are using local knowledge and nature-based solutions to respond to climate challenges.

The series emerged from a transformative youth media exchange facilitated by the Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (Norec) in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the SDI Secretariat from July to November 2025.

During her exchange, Flora learnt everything from camera setup to video editing, public speaking to concept development from the KYC TV team at the SDI Secretariat—Xola Mteto and James Tayler. “I can now use the cameras, set them up, design a podcast by coming up with a concept note and edit videos. I have also learnt public speaking, know when to speak and make sure I give a proper input,” Flora explains. “When I go back home, I will gladly teach my fellow youth what I have learnt.”

Flora wasn’t alone in this journey. Tadala Zidana, the Finance and Administration Officer at the Centre for Community Organisation and Development (CCODE) in Malawi, spent her exchange with the SDI Secretariat Finance Team. During the programme, Tadala gained practical experience in a range of financial tasks ranging from compliance, requisitions, organisational budgeting, survey creation and weekly priority tracking. She says, “I also strengthened my skills through job shadowing, preparation of monthly management accounts and the consolidation of financial statements for the SDI Secretariat and its affiliates—an especially valuable experience, as I typically prepare financials for a single organisation.”

“Beyond the technical skills, I learnt important lessons in leadership dynamics, teamwork, patience and shared responsibility. Visiting the members of the South African SDI Alliance in Johannesburg further broadened my perspective, allowing me to see how practices we use at CCODE, often through hard-copy systems, are implemented here in digitised ways. I am keen to further strengthen my understanding in these areas and adapt some of the lessons back home,” Tadala concludes.

The first episode of Voices from the Frontlines features Natasha Kabosha, a youth federation leader from KYC TV Zambia, sharing insights on community-led climate action and the power of youth leadership in the SDI movement.

Voicing the urban poor: New report highlights experiences from an energy justice programme

A new report published in the Field Actions Science Reports aims at voicing the urban poor and their experiences from the Energy Justice Programme.

Authors David Sheridan the Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Energy Justice Programme (EJP) coordinator, Mwaura Njogu a Renewable Energy Engineering Consultant, Andrew Maki the Co-director of Justice and Empowerment Initiatives (JEI) and Frederick Agyemang the Project coordinator EJP Ghana all work within the SDI Network.

SDI is committed to project typologies that produce learning at scale around clean energy access as part of our informal settlement upgrading agenda and empower the urban poor. Since 2014, we have been actively involved in the field of access to energy in Africa, India and the Philippines with our SDI Energy Justice Programme leverages community-led collection of disaggregated energy access data, community empowerment programmes and pro-poor access models. With the growing need for access in slums, our model offers bottom-up, innovative and adaptable methodological options for catalysing pro-poor change at settle, city and global levels.

Read the full report here.

The EJP is a demonstrative case study of SDI’s actions to improve access to essential services in slums and thereby empower the urban poor. The programme uses all of SDI’s tools, including the Know Your City (KYC) data collection programme, to generate grassroots and tailor-made solutions to energy access in slums. 

Energy for the urban poor

Energy is a key condition for developing essential services in these neighbourhoods. SDI’s EJP has active projects in 12 countries, namely Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, India and the Philippines which has enabled affiliate federations to provide improved energy access. Approximately 25 000 distinct households with nearly 100 000 beneficiaries in total benefitting from the improvements. 

According to the report, lack of access to sustainable energy is a significant barrier to slum development. The EJP sets out to leverage SDI’s core rituals of community-led settlement profiling, women-led savings groups and peer-to-peer exchanges to develop innovative solutions to critical service delivery gaps and scalable energy access projects to integrate into wider settlement upgrading programmes.

Data products produced as outputs from the EJP, such as this report, are vital tools for influencing and negotiating with key stakeholders.

The longstanding work of SDI’s Kenyan affiliate with the Nairobi City County Government (NCCG) resulted in the Mukuru informal settlements being designated as a Special Planning Area in 2017. This breakthrough subsequently demonstrated the application of community mobilisation methodologies and participatory approaches to slum re-development planning and implementation. In collaboration with NCCG, Kenya’s SDI affiliate coordinated the work of developing a comprehensive spatial plan for the redevelopment of Mukuru.

This model is a great example of utilising SDI’s work as evidence and negotiating with influential decision-makers. 

The report highlights, that SDI’s Energy Justice Programmes ratchet effect which reveals that the evidence can be used to influence decision-makers, and cooperate with them (public, private, local and international), which can result in the adoption of contextual legal frameworks, just like Mukuru SPA and may assist in guaranteeing the institutionalised co-creation process in the long-term. 

Learnings

The report emphasises some key learnings in terms of project design and impacts, which were identified between the inception of the EJP and now. According to the reports, there is no “one size fits all” approach to a project. The authors do not propose a unique solution to each context, but rather a strong methodology to legitimise each energy solution emerging from and required in a specific context. 

Savings groups can fund solar energy systems. Within the SDI network, savings groups have been particularly adapted to the improvement of energy access in African slums. These groups can be a practical financing solution, especially for the EJP, with the model itself being easily replicable and adaptable. 

Training community members on the technical aspects of solar systems is integral to the implementation plan. 

Solar energy systems have great spillover effects. The transition to low-carbon energy systems is increasingly considered an important point in delivering energy for urban-poor communities. This recognises that communities must play an instrumental role in the implementation and management of these energy transitions. Thus far transitions have been slow, but by including communities to drive and co-create the opportunities for energy transitions, the adoption of innovative technologies may be accelerated, and more inclusive in terms of policy development and it enables capacity and skills building to support new and current economic activities. 

Download the full report.

From Recovery to Resilience: Community-led Responses to Covid-19 in Informal Settlements

In 2020, as Covid-19 spread rapidly across the cities where SDI is active, federations recognised the need for both urgent responses to the acute humanitarian crises facing their communities and longer-term strategies to engage with government and other stakeholders to address the prolonged effects of this global crisis. Through a partnership supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Cities Alliance , and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) we were able to channel much needed resources to organised communities of the urban poor in 17 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to facilitate these processes.

Over the past 20 months, the Covid-19 pandemic and pandemic responses such as government lockdowns have highlighted and exacerbated many of the chronic stresses urban poor communities live with and struggle against daily. As such, the strategies supported by this SDI / Cities Alliance partnership are about more than Covid-19 response and recovery: they are about sustainable, inclusive, and pro-poor urban development that provides communities with meaningful opportunities to work with government and other stakeholders to address issues such as food security, access to livelihood opportunities, skills training, and basic services like water and sanitation, as well as the need for accurate slum data to drive government responses in times of crisis.

SDI’s urban poor federations have shown that they have the social networks and systems in place to respond efficiently and effectively to disasters and chronic stressors. They have demonstrated their critical role to governments and development partners as reliable actors at the forefront of provision of information on and services to the most vulnerable. Indeed, with lockdowns and government restrictions, many external organisations were unable to access the vulnerable communities where SDI federations live and work, highlighting the immense value of working directly with these communities. 

The following examples highlight how federations have the information, knowledge, and skills to work with government and other stakeholders to implement effective, scalable solutions to chronic and acute urban challenges.

Improved public health and safety

Many residents in slums live in overcrowded homes without access to on-site water or sanitation and face the constant threat of forced eviction. This means that preventative Covid-19 measures such as hand-washing, disinfecting, physical distancing, and quarantine are often impossible for the urban poor.

Outcome Story: Bridging Knowledge and PPE Gaps in Tanzania

There was a gap in knowledge on Covid-19 awareness, especially in informal settlements. Through this project, federation teams have been able to provide support to ensure that communities and schools awareness and knowledge on the pandemic is enhanced and precautions are being taken against the pandemic. This went hand in hand with the provision of hand washing facilities and PPE in places which had no facilities such as in market places and schools. 

This has contributed to behavior change in terms of improving hygiene as a way to stop the spread of Covid-19. Communities now have the knowledge and facilities to wash hands. Correct information sharing around Covid-19 has helped groups such as boda boda drivers (motorcycle taxis), food vendors, and school children which had limited access to information about the pandemic. Interactions with such groups provided an opportunity for them to ask questions and seek clarifications, which enhanced their understanding on prevention and treatment methods. Another significant outcome is the recognition of the Tanzanian SDI Alliance as a partner in addressing pandemics by the government. This has improved the relationship and established new ones with other units/departments within the municipalities such as the public health unit and the regional office. These relationships will help to provide more engagement and opportunities for the federation, and the alliance in general as well to discuss and negotiate further interventions related to the health and public safety of people living in informal settlements. The pandemic has taught us lessons on hygiene promotion, in particular hand washing behaviors, which is a serious issue the community needs to practice beyond the pandemic.

The federation led the process of planning and implementation of these activities and interventions. This included gathering information from different groups on the pandemic, identifying needs, and supporting awareness as facilitators in schools, markets, households, and settlements.

In Ghana, the federation was able to identify and map Covid-19 hotspots. Community members were trained to manufacture and install hand washing stations for community use within these hotspots. Additionally, the grant enabled the installation of in-yard water connections to poor and vulnerable households in slums/informal settlements to increase access to water supply. In Zambia, the federation was able to support provisional WASH interventions and set precedents for water provision to slum communities through community-led processes. Through the provision of water storage and hand-washing facilities in slums, communities are now able to regularly wash their hands in public places and this also enabled market committees to enforce preventive regulations since the infrastructure to wash hands is now available. At the household level the Zambia Alliance identified 75 women with health vulnerabilities who are at greater risk when collecting water from congested public taps. Additionally, through engagement meetings with water trusts and utility companies the federation was able to lobby for pro-poor water subsidies.

Enhanced livelihoods

Despite the negative effect and impact to individuals, communities, and countries the Covid-19 response actions have also brought opportunities with them. Some which came as a result of this programme are income generating projects, for example liquid soap-making and sewing of reusable face masks respectively have equipped community members with skills which some families are now using to earn a living. Federation members in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were trained in sewing reusable face masks and the production of liquid soap and sanitizers. In Malawi, federation women and youth trained in design and tailoring produced and distributed 17,300 reusable face masks to vulnerable members of the community and primary school going children.

Outcome Story: Building Resilient Livelihoods in Zambia

The Zambia SDI Alliance facilitated trainings to capacitate slum dwellers with skills necessary to build resilient livelihoods. The trainings were conducted in two typologies namely sack gardening/organic farming and metal fabrication. Sack gardening involves the use of biodegradable waste in urban agriculture to provide nutritional support and sustainable livelihoods. At household level, sack gardens significantly reduced food shortages and helped in reducing garbage that has been indiscriminately disposed of in informal settlements, thereby creating healthy and safe environments. Sack gardens have a lower production cost as their main input is organic waste, which is readily available in informal settlements. The sack gardening enterprise consumes about 20 tons of organic waste in a month and with the plans to scale up production, the enterprises will be a significant consumer of garbage being produced in informal settlements. Besides the environmental benefits of the enterprises, slum dwellers secured resilient livelihoods that are set to provide employment to more slum dwellers when the intervention is scaled up.

Metal fabrication training also brought some positive changes to youths, as it created an opportunity for them to produce products that are on demand as well as helping their communities to meet their community demands. Currently the enterprise has been  instrumental in harnessing fabrication techniques for  Covid-19 prevention. The enterprise created a touch-less hand washing facility that has special features to avoid contact with the facility. The facilities have since been distributed into public spaces as well as for other interested organizations. The enterprise has created a viable livelihood for the unemployed youths and this intervention will continue into all settlements to create local technology that can easily be managed and maintained locally.

Pro-poor data driven development

SDI affiliates adapted Know Your City profiling and mapping tools to gather household and settlement level data on the impacts of Covid-19 on the urban poor. In Zimbabwe, youth were trained on data collection tools used to collect information on the level of awareness and community preparedness to Covid-19 as well as the pandemic’s impact on community members in terms of livelihoods, housing, and WASH. In the Philippines, the federation undertook a vulnerability mapping of 22 communities in which localized Covid-19 hotspot maps were produced and included the identification of households with vulnerable groups such as seniors, children, persons with disabilities, and pregnant women. In Botswana, the federation interviewed 33 savings groups to gather information on how Covid-19 has impacted the livelihoods and savings of urban poor communities. Findings revealed that many members stopped saving due to loss of employment and income. Most of the small businesses collapsed during the first lockdown and many of the street vendors that would travel across the border to buy their goods were no longer able to work with borders being closed. Students also faced hardships due to disruptions in education. Findings also showed that schools not only provide education but also provide students with social development skills. The pandemic has contributed to an increase in psychological and economic pressure leaving many without jobs or the ability to put food on the table, which has also highlighted the spike in gender-based violence.

Outcome Story: Using Community Data to Improve Basic Service Access in India

As part of this project, slum profiling and collecting data on community toilets was undertaken from 10 settlements across 10 cities. While conducting these profiles, Mahila Milan leaders realized the different issues communities are facing in the area of water, sanitation, drainage, jobs, etc. They found out which settlements have or lack access to toilets, what water facilities are available to residents, what mechanisms are in place to collect garbage, and how people are dealing with job issues. In Pimpri, Mahila Milan leader Rehana highlighted how in one of the settlements the community toilet that was constructed in 2018 was neither connected to the main sewer line nor was maintained properly which meant people were facing difficulties using the toilet. The women in the settlement approached the local councilor, spoke to him about the problem, and sought his support to fix it. In her own settlement, the drainage water enters people’s homes especially during the rains giving rise to many water borne diseases and skin infections. The dirty water from the community toilet as well as drainage water from individual houses is let out into one drainage line that causes this problem. They have been approaching the local councilor for the last five months but there was no relief. They again visited the local councilor and said that if you don’t take it up then we will have to approach the ward. We work for an NGO and are aware of all the processes and procedures that need to be done to sort out issues. They then got in touch with the health department in the ward office, did site visits, and within eight days they had laid down new drainage pipes. Six such pipes need to be laid down in the settlement in different places which will be completed soon.  

Similarly, the Mahila Milan leaders from Surat were facing drainage issues where water would overflow onto the roads and into the homes. Coordinating and negotiating with the local councilor and ward, they were able to resolve the problem.

In both cities these problems arose during lockdown and community members could not travel to the ward office. However, the Mahila Milan women were adamant to resolve their problems and so they started communicating with the officials via phone on a daily basis until the problem was resolved. At times the officials try to avoid these women, don’t take their calls, and say they forgot what it was about, but the women say even if we have to call them 100 times, we do that and should keep doing it. This is a way of showing how serious the organization and communities are about resolving their own issues, how accountable the leaders feel for their own settlement and people, and how this can be a means of strengthening their relationship with the city and authorities. The end result has been that these women are now called by the city to help them with certain programs or implementing schemes that benefit the city as well as communities. They also get an opportunity to start thinking of upgrading their settlements in different ways.

The Sierra Leone SDI Alliance, in consultation with Freetown City Council (FCC), developed an app (FISCOVIDATA) and live dashboard in which communities can identify hotspots and link to government service providers in real time. The mobile app and dashboard provides two-way communication – it relays information to appropriate authorities and notifies communities of actions taken. Piloted in 10 specific slums, this community-based approach has proven that empowering communities to mobilise actions for response and mitigation of health pandemics, is an effective way to mitigate the spread. This resulted in the reversal of the spread of Covid-19 in these settlements. This work has attracted the interest of other partners, namely Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) and College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) to collaboratively work with DICOVERC to develop the app further so as to intervene in any future health emergencies.

Institutional collaboration between the urban poor and government

The need to address basic services, health needs, and decent shelter is critical in the Covid-19 fight and this project supported communities to highlight their plight and push for meaningful change. Applying rules created for the formal city into an informal settlement is challenging and may paralyze the action. Agreements need to be reached and governments need to find flexibility on policies and regulations so that formal interventions can take place in informal settlements. In South Africa, the Federation in the North West province started to implement the Asivikelane campaign in October 2021. The campaign collects data about basic service delivery (water, sanitation, and waste removal) in 21 informal settlements and uses this information to pressurize local municipalities to deliver. Fifteen settlements were mobilized to select 35 representatives to join a meeting with the Madibeng Administrator, the Department of Electricity, the Department of Human Settlements, and the Housing Development Agency as a united front. Through multiple engagements, the SA SDI Alliance is now in the process of signing an official MOU with the Madibeng municipality that will bind the municipality to the working partnership with the Federation in terms of addressing informal settlement upgrading, housing delivery, and formalizing structures.

Community Based Organisations are Key to Covid-19 Response

In this article, which originally appeared on the Sanitation & Water for All website, one of SDI’s co-founders and former chair of the SDI Board, Sheela Patel, highlights some of the notable responses to the Covid-19 pandemic – and resulting lockdowns – by SDI-affiliated federations of the urban poor.

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To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the two major guidelines are practicing social distancing and washing your hands with soap or use sanitizers. This directive could come across as an additional precautionary step in the lives of many. However, for several communities (especially those living in informal settlements) in the developing countries, these directives are challenging to follow.

We spoke to Shamim Banu Salim Sheikh, a member of Mahila Milan (a self-organized, decentralized collective of female) living in Mumbai slum about her community and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, “we try and tell other people that they should keep their hands clean, houses clean, don’t sneeze or cough in public places. But all these things are for rich people and not poor people like us. In this area most of the people have at least 7 to 8 members in their houses, how are you going to tell them they should not sit together or keep distance between each other?” Through a video message, Alice Wanini, a community health volunteer (CHV) in Mukuru Kwa Reuben slum in Nairobi, told SDI how difficult it is to encourage preventative measures such as social distancing and frequent handwashing in overcrowded slums, where 10 sqm shacks house families of ten or more and long lines at handwashing stations leave people frustrated.

This is the reality for almost 1 billion people living in informal settlements –between 30-70% of inhabitants in some cities–pandemics exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities, such as inequalities  in  access  to  water,  sanitation  and  hygiene  services, loss of livelihood for daily-wage earners, precarity of underlying conditions such as respiratory ailments, water-borne diseases, life-style diseases associated with poor nutrition and substance abuse.  As COVID-19 cases spiked around the world, stringent lockdown measures were put in places, thereby making community leaders or community based organizations as the first responders. In Sierra Leone, Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP) and their support NGO, the Centre for Dialogue on Human Settlements and Poverty Alleviation (CODOHSAPA) has been involved in the fight against COVID-19 in their localities within Freetown Municipality, which is the epicenter of the pandemic. The prevention and mitigation response undertaken by the FEDURP are as follows:

• Development of case monitoring app (Freetown Informal Settlement Covid-19 Data – Fiscovidata) and mobilization of community volunteers to focus on the case and incident reporting,
• Development of sensitization messaging materials such as posters, handbills, and videos: FEDURP consulted various messaging materials developed by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. The contents of these materials were then customized to reflect the realities of slums and informal settlements. Engagement in community sensitization,  through direct community outreach and using various social media platforms to share videos and radio discussion,
• Provision of veronica buckets (for hand washing) and face masks,
• Working closely with settlement-based local chiefs to enforce government regulations and practices,
• Engagement with state and local authorities to enhance government response to needs of informal settlements: Working with Freetown City Council to support a community kitchen targeting three extremely vulnerable communities targeting people with disabilities, the elderly, orphans, pregnant girls and female- headed households with multiple dependents.

In Malawi, 75% of the urban population live in informal settlements (National Statistical Office, 2018). The Malawi SDI Alliance has made the following progress in supporting informal settlements with information on COVID-19:

• All 35 federation groups in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu now have hand washing equipment. Cities were prioritized because that’s where the first cases were reported. Federation savings groups continue to meet and conduct their savings, loans and group entrepreneurial activities in compliance with government regulation.
• The Malawi Alliance worked with the Lilongwe District Health Office to spread Covid-19 awareness messages to 10 informal settlements in Lilongwe City (population roughly 30,000) using a public address system that can effectively reach large numbers of people.
• Community leaders from 24 informal settlements in Lilongwe City were capacitated with knowledge and skills on how to disseminate COVID-19  messages to their communities.
• Media efforts carried out by Malawi Know Your City TV team to raise awareness with youth, including the production of 6 short videos depicting how COVID-19 has affected the informal trader, the girl child, and other vulnerable groups in informal settlements.

Through this overarching narrative on community action during pandemics, I want to highlight that lockdown means local adaptation–community members and leaders are the first respondents. Yet, their contribution remains invisible and unspoken. These community leaders are most trusted and what they say is taken seriously by the people. Unfortunately, the government do not include their ideas, suggestions or solutions in planning and response. Unless there is a two-way trust between providers and affected communities, and the voices of the most marginalized are not heard, the crucial support and assistance in lockdown will not happen.

I cannot stress enough, when the nation-state puts people in lockdown, there is an urgent need to ensure that they have access to food items and basic care. People are ENTITLED to these basic services, showing “beneficiary” labelled photos of people receiving food is not acceptable. Informal settlements are not receiving the aggressive support that they need, especially, in bringing the livelihoods for informal dwellers and removal of past deficits like poor water and sanitation.

The SWA global partnership has a unique role in this crisis and for creating a post-COVID world, first, by mobilizing its partners, especially governments to take an urgent and much-needed action to provide water and sanitation services in both urban and rural areas. Secondly, using its convening power to strengthen in-country inclusive partnerships to enhance liaison between government and all the relevant key stakeholders, especially the community based organisations (CBOs). Not just during this crisis situation, but also ensuring that the voices of CBOs are also reflected in the advocacy plans of national CSO networks. We all need to keep reminding each other that public health emergencies, such as COVID-19 and gradually building disaster of climate change now demand that we BUILD BACK BETTER.

Malawi SDI Alliance Response to Covid-19

On behalf of the the Malawi Federation of the Urban & Rural Poor and The Centre for Community Organization & Development (CCODE), SDI presents the work to fight COVID-19 in Malawi. 

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On Thursday, April 2, President of the republic of Malawi confirmed the country’s first three cases of COVID-19. On the same day, the president declared a state of emergency. In view of this directive, schools and universities have been closed since Monday, March 23. Authorities have also banned public gatherings of more than 100 people, which applies to weddings, funerals, religious congregations, rallies, and government meetings. Security forces have been deployed to enforce the restrictions.

In Malawi, 75% of the urban population live in informal settlements (NSO 2018). Conditions in informal settlements are grossly inadequate at the best of times. Many residents live without access to on-site water or sanitation, people live in over-crowded housing, and are facing the constant threat of forced eviction. Hand-washing, disinfecting surfaces, physical distancing and quarantine for those infected – essential elements of COVID19 prevention – are often impossible for residents of these communities. In addition, residents of informal settlements often do not have access to accurate information and, in cases where such information is provided, the information is provided using male-dominated channels.

Furthermore, the measures in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have disrupted livelihood activities for many of these communities. As normal economic activity comes to a halt, the vulnerability of low-paid and daily wage workers in the country has intensified to the point that many are struggling to survive. People most at risk of being impoverished by Covid-19 are those who fall between the cracks of most social protection systems: the people living in informal settlements and working in the informal economy.

It is against this background that the Malawi SDI Alliance has been supporting informal settlements in the cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu. The communities are being supported with daily access to information as provided by the government and entrepreneurship skills in the COVID-19 crisis, as many businesses are folding. The communities are also being provided with COVID-19 prevention equipment such as face masks, hand washing buckets, and hand sanitisers.

Below is an update of the progress that has been made in supporting informal settlements with information on COVID-19.

• All 35 federation groups in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu now have hand washing equipment. Cities were prioritised because that’s where the first cases were reported . Federation savings groups continue to meet and conduct their savings, loans and group entrepreneurial activities in compliance with government regulation. Plans are underway for the federation’s tailoring groups to produce masks to be sold at a reduced price to federation members and to scale up these efforts throughout Malawi.
• The Malawi Alliance worked with the Lilongwe District Health Office to spread Covid-19 awareness messages to ten informal settlements in Lilongwe City (population roughly 30,000) using a public address system that can effectively reach large numbers of people. The Alliance hopes to enter into partnership with District Health Offices (DHO) in other cities to carry out similar work in those areas.
• Community leaders from 24 informal settlements in Lilongwe City were capacitated with knowledge and skills on how to disseminate COVID-19   messages to their communities. These capacity building sessions were specifically targeting informal settlements where DHO officers were being chased away. These communities do not believe that COVID-19 is real or that there are confirmed cases in Malawi. Many continue to hang on to unfounded conspiracy theories about the disease, putting themselves and their communities at high risk of contracting and spreading the virus. So far, a total of 480 community leaders from 24 informal settlements in Lilongwe city have participated in these sessions. The Alliance aims to scale up efforts by conducting similar sessions in cities and towns across Malawi.
• Media efforts carried out by the Malawi Know Your City TV team to raise awareness with youth, including: production of six short videos depicting how the COVID-19 pandemic  has affected the informal trader, the girl child, and other vulnerable groups in informal settlements; posters on COVID-19 messages produced and shared in various platforms; and dissemination of awareness messages across various social media channels. Federation youth groups  are also engaging  their fellow youth gathering and other community platforms to disseminate these knowledge materials. The alliance has also collaborated  with  a famous Musician among the youth population to produce a song on COVID-19 prevention. The Lilongwe District Health Office has agreed to train Federation youth on Theatre for Behaviour change and Development, and will provide support on the production of a music video on COVID-19.
• The Malawi Alliance  has partnered with The Mzuzu City Council to support federation leadership in the Northen region with COVID-19 prevention measures.  These leaders have been tasked with the role of spreading the COVID-19 messages within their communities.

The Malawi SDI Alliance plans to continue efforts to raise awareness around the COVID-19 pandemic and provide support for the communities they serve. They are actively seeking additional support from donor partners and working with government to reach as many people as they can in Malawi’s informal settlements.

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Makhodo savings has gone digital

Between June and August 2019, the Malawi federation has begun a process to digitize its savings data. The following reflections have been compiled with an aim of providing insight on how the exercise was conducted, observations made this far, and recommendations to continue this work.

At a touch of a button the federation is able to check the amount of savings being made across the country without organizing a meeting or being physically there.

At the heart of the movement’s work is its women centered savings groups that are involved in various community development initiatives. These groups play a crucial role in their local areas through their contribution to social capital, community cohesion, empowerment and a range of other economic benefits. This is in pursuit of financial inclusion aimed at drawing the ‘unbanked’ urban poor population into the savings culture and consequently establishing a financial market that will respond to their needs. The lack of access to financial market adversely affects growth and poverty alleviation as poor people find it difficult to accumulate savings, build assets to mitigate against risks, as well as invest in income-generating projects that would improve their living conditions.

The federation women led savings groups are involved in collection of data – for there is power in information. In the area of savings, the groups are involved in the collection of money – the savings, and its corresponding data.  This data – if organized properly, can be used as a powerful advocacy tool in lobbying for resources to support poor people across the global or affiliate within countries. However, most of this savings data remains disjointed and, in some situations, not correctly recorded by groups.

All this is about to change with the introduction of an online or a digital platform that is aimed at supporting federations to organize their savings data at one place. This information can be found at www.wetheinvisible.org.  The digital platform is expected to make savings data more reliable and easy to validate; build credit history for the poor; increase online visibility of the movement; and improve quality control. This platform will also act as a database for federation members – in a form of a members register. Further, the platform will also enable the federation to provide a reliable account of the number of people that the movement is supporting – getting accountable.

The platform was firstly piloted in India and it is being introduced in Africa. The two countries that are being piloted in Africa are Kenya and Malawi. In Malawi, the process has reached an advanced stage where savings groups have started loading their savings data on the platform – Makhodo savings has literally gone digital. At a touch of a button the federation is able to check the amount of savings being made across the country without organizing a meeting or being physically there. This report therefore seeks to provide steps that have been followed by the Malawi federation to get to this point. It will provide the steps that have been followed and the observation made to this far.

The first session: setting the pace 

The first session of the exercise took place in Lilongwe between June 30^th– August 6^th. The session was aimed at informing the members about the exercise – which is to support savings data organization as evidence for impact and outcome investing and understanding the existing groups’ processes to be aligned with the developed system. The session was also used to prepare savings groups in mobilizing the necessary information to be used in the next phase of the exercise – digitalization phase. The session agreed to pilot the process in the three cities of Blantyre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu. The federation leaders were given the task of supporting savings groups from the three cities with collection of members data. This meeting involved 29 the federation savings frontline leaders from all the three regions.

The second session: City workshops

The supporting team conducted three workshops in the three cities that were chosen for piloting: Blantyre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu. The sessions attended by representatives from all the groups in that particular city were aimed at supporting groups in the managing of their group data on the platform. The session supported group members with capacities in data entry and analysis. The training reached out to 62 people from 53 savings groups – with 15 in Mzuzu, 22 in Blantyre, and 25 in Lilongwe. Additionally, the meetings also invited 2 representatives each from the districts of Rumphi and Nkhatabay in the North, Kasungu and Dedza in the Central and Mulanje and Machinga in the South. These are districts which have been earmarked the upscaling of the process.  At the end of the trainings each federation zone was provided with an electronic tablet for the data entry. A total of 25 tablets of the 29 which were purchased for this work have been handed over to the federation.  The gadgets have been assigned to savings groups but they are under the overall custody of the leaders from each particular area.

Our observations

Since the inception of the process we have made a number of observations. Most of these observations are positive but there is still a need for the federation to manage them to avoid other people taking advantage of the system.

Digital migration is a technology concept. We have noted that most groups are having challenges with the use and management of information using the tablets that have been provided to the groups. This was anticipated as most people are tech-ignorant. This should not be confused with resistance from the groups. We expect that the groups will master the process within a period of four months.  However, for the groups to get to this expected level, there will be a need for the provision of constant backstopping support within this period. Supporting the groups will be the role of the leaders who will be provided with a crash training in the use and management of information using the tablets.

A remobilization process. The process has resulted in reigniting the interest of old members who had left the federation process. For instance, Blantyre has since recorded an increase in the number of groups attending monthly meetings by 10%. The likely explanation to this increase could be that the old members are thinking that the federation wants to start issuing out loans – business and housing. The federation leadership will be supported to make sure that these members have been properly re-admitted back into the system before they access loans. This will ensure that their expectations are managed.

An opportunity to involve the youth. The Malawi alliance will take this process as an opportunity to involve federation youth in its activities. As already pointed out, most mainstream federation members – the mamas, are not conversant with technological concepts and gadgets.  Therefore, involving young people in this process will help its institutionalization within the groups as well as providing an opportunity for the youth members to understand the rituals of the federation. To this day 12 young people have already been trained as trainer of trainers.

There are cost implications to the process. We have observed that going digital has a cost implication if the process it to be successful. There are two main cost drivers to the process. Firstly, there is a need for the leaders to provide monitoring and backstopping support to the groups up until when the groups are fully conversant with the process. Further to that, the tablets will have to be loaded with internet data bundles for transmission of data. These money related factors should be considered when planning to scale up the digitalization process to other cities and towns.

Digitalization of savings data is long overdue and the Malawi alliance feels this process will help it to break into new funding opportunities from non-traditional partners. These non-traditional partners will require the federation to change its attitudes towards the implementation of projects. Therefore, the federation leadership should be supported in realigning their thinking and start showing evidence of impact and outcomes. Focusing on impact and outcomes will support the federation in moving away from activity-based reporting. This means that there is a lot of work that should be done before the Malawi alliance can break into these new funding opportunities. The biggest task is to build the capacity of the leadership of the federation for them to understand their role in this digital migration value chain. The understanding of the leaders is expected to trickle down to the groups where the actual work will be conducted.

Building Savings & Social Capital in Malawi

Organize

As of 2017, the Malawi Homeless People’s Federation has organized 505 groups in 28 cities and towns. It is well known that the central organizing tenet of SDI revolves around women-led savings groups. The value of savings to a poor community’s ability to absorb or adapt to shocks and stressors is paramount, and the social networks that women-led savings group create amplify benefits to community resilience. In 2017, the federation facilitated the formation of new savings zones in Thyolo, Mulanje, Chikhwawa (Southern Region), Mchinji and Salima (Central Region), and Rumphi and Nkhata-Bay (Northern Region). The formation of the savings zones has helped create frequent learning platforms that enhance the social, political, and economic capital in these local networks. In addition, the year saw the federation conduct regional youth savings symposiums. The symposiums brought together youth leaders from all districts and the mobilization of approximately 500 youth savers.

Collaborate

During the course of the year, the federation participated in dozens of meetings and forums organized by government and its agencies. During the meetings, the federation advocated for the adoption of federation rituals – especially savings – throughout slum communities in Malawi. As a result of the meetings, the federation entered into an agreement with the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM). The agreement will see the federation working hand in hand with the central bank in mobilizing and training savings groups throughout the country. The federation was identified by the central bank after noticing that almost all the other savings approaches have been plagued by mismanagement. This agreement is expected to increase the visibility of the federation, resulting in the opening of new saving zones, an increased number of organized urban poor communities, and reduced vulnerability in slum communities.

Thrive

As savings groups and networks mature, they move into loan-making and explore more creative community funds to support basic services and infrastructure projects. Households contribute monthly to funds from which they are able to take loans. Within the savings group structures, the federation has introduced training on group investments, documentation on the impact of savings, and loan interest tracking and management. To increase livelihood options, close to 100 youths were equipped with skills in the production of various art and craft products and one group in Lilongwe opened a bakery. These efforts enhance financial literacy and access in urban poor communities and create improved economic livelihoods. The networking of these groups at settlement, city, and national levels builds social and political capital in urban poor communities.

The Malawi slum dweller federation efforts contribute to city resilience through the building of collective identity and community support as well as the building of skills and training that improve urban poor livelihoods.

 This post is part of a series of case studies from our 2017 Annual Report titled ‘The Road to Resilience.’ Emerging from the field of ecology,  ‘resilience’  describes the capacity of a system to maintain or recover from disruption or disturbance. Cities are also complex systems and a resilience framework addresses the inter- connectedness of formal and informal city futures. Moreover, it enables a nuanced reflection on the nature of shocks and chronic stressors – recognising that the latter are particularly acute in slum dweller communities and that this critically undermines the entire city’s economic, social, political, and environmental resilience.As with personal resilience, city resilience demands awareness, acknowledgment of reality, and a capacity to move beyond reactivity to responses that are proactive, thoughtful, and beneficial to the whole. The most enlightened individuals and cities will be those that understand their responsibility to the most vulnerable and to the planet. Our 2017 Annual Report showcases some of SDI’s achievements over the past year on the road to resilience. Click here for the full report. 

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[caption id="attachment_4974" align="alignnone" width="610"] Delegates of the Southern Africa Hub welcoming the South African Deputy Minister of Human Settlements, Zou Kota-Fredericks.[/caption]

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