Innovative Edge Session: Decolonising Advisory Community

At the RINGO Learn­ing Fes­ti­val in 2022, RINGO core team mem­ber Nan­cy Kankam Kusi (the Idea Car­ri­er) shared key learn­ings from devel­op­ing and test­ing the inno­va­tion: Decolonis­ing Advi­so­ry Com­mu­ni­ty.

How might we dis­rupt colonial/traditional per­cep­tions of capac­i­ty, knowl­edge, and exper­tise, rather than per­pet­u­at­ing the nar­ra­tive of the north doing capac­i­ty build­ing ‘to’ south­ern civ­il soci­ety?

Con­ver­sa­tions around decoloni­sa­tion are not new; there is a rich tra­di­tion of local and nation­al activists chal­leng­ing neo-colo­nial atti­tudes around the supe­ri­or­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al approach­es, knowl­edge and exper­tise. How­ev­er, in recent years, enor­mous momen­tum has been build­ing, sparked by the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment, to shake up the sys­tem. In 2020, Peace Direct held a consul­ta­tion on how struc­tur­al racism man­i­fests in the aid sec­tor, the find­ings of which showed high ener­gy for change, but a need for sup­port and guid­ance in terms of what it actu­al­ly means to decolonise and how to take the first step. In many instances, organ­i­sa­tions were either try­ing to fig­ure this out inter­nal­ly, or going to con­sul­tants in the Minor­i­ty World, when there are a wealth of experts in the Major­i­ty World who can pro­vide this sup­port.

The pro­to­typ­ing team seeks to ensure that local and nation­al actors are in the dri­ving seat of this change, by test­ing an advi­so­ry plat­form that brings togeth­er a com­mu­ni­ty of experts on var­i­ous aspects of decoloni­sa­tion, and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions want­i­ng to change how they work.

Watch the record­ing of the Inno­v­a­tive Edge ses­sion here: