2024 | Practice Becoming Platform

By 2024, we were accepting that platforms and infrastructures would inevitably enable long-term stewardship across ecosystems. 

The year marked an important milestone as Development Dynamics became a Certified B Corporation before turning five. The certification provided structure for internal reflection on governance, sustainability, care, accountability, and institutional systems. It invited deeper attention to our own formation, environmental responsibility, the well-being of our core lynchpins, accountability to stakeholders and the financial and human capacity required for institutional health.

Coalitions and networks were increasingly seeking governance structures capable of carrying complexity. The CATALYST coalition, comprising Ipas Africa Alliance, Centre for Reproductive Rights, Population Council Kenya, International Planned Parenthood Federation Africa Region and FIGO, engaged us to facilitate the design of governance systems, implementation plans and shared ways of working. The process helped partners clarify purpose, values, roles, decision-making, and accountability mechanisms, strengthening the coalition’s ability to move coherently across sexual and reproductive health and rights advocacy spaces.

Across the global LGBTQI+ movement, questions of governance, representation and legitimacy remained central. ILGA World engaged us to support constitutional review, governance reform and organisational development processes through an intersectional feminist lens. Through consultations, design workshops, policy reviews, and support for governance deliberations, the work strengthened institutional coherence, democratic participation, and representation across a highly diverse global membership.

The future of HIV prevention among adolescents and young people remained a major priority across Eastern and Southern Africa. The 2Gether4SRHR team invited DD to design, facilitate, and feed-forward strategic dialogues focused on adolescent girls and young women and adolescent boys and young men, especially those hardest to reach and most at risk. The process strengthened alignment between evidence, policy and future programme priorities.

The SKY Girls platform continued creating opportunities to engage adolescent girls through a broader resilience-building and empowerment model. Through Good Business and the Tandem Network, we provided technical assistance on human papillomavirus and family planning for SKY Girls Kenya and Nigeria. The work included formative research, outcomes and evaluation thinking, message development, implementation guidance, stakeholder mapping, partner engagement and health resource mapping. This helped the platform expand its contribution from adolescent empowerment to deeper public health conversations about knowledge, stigma, vaccination confidence, and reproductive health decision-making.

The relationship between organisational health and social impact became increasingly visible through several assignments. Well Made Strategy and Development Dynamics developed a joint IMPACT 2024 offering focused on health checks for social impact organisations. The collaboration shaped a first version of a donor-ready framework, organisational strengthening approaches, and stakeholder engagement models designed to help funders and grantees work with greater clarity, alignment and value.
In mid-2024, Food for the Hungry Kenya was seeking to translate programme ambitions into stronger resource mobilisation pathways. We facilitated an eight-day co-creation design sprint that helped teams develop three investor-ready project concepts. Through landscape analysis, World Café conversations, human-centred design and iterative prototyping, the process strengthened shared ownership, strategic clarity and donor-facing storytelling.

In the same year, World University Service of Canada engaged DD for knowledge and learning mobilisation for the Power to Girls project in the Kalobeyei and Kakuma refugee contexts. Through landscape analysis, ethnographic inquiry, gender-power analysis, and participatory co-creation, the work generated evidence, documentaries, and knowledge products that strengthened learning on girls’ education, gender-based violence prevention, boys’ engagement, and community-level behaviour change.

Across humanitarian and movement ecosystems, movement building was becoming an increasingly important capability. The African Institute for Children Studies and the Consortium for Re-Imagining Humanitarian Action (CHRA) engaged us to support members across Eastern and Southern Africa in developing a unified movement-building plan. Through diagnostic assessment, a virtual three-day workshop and the Movement Building Canvas, the process helped members clarify governance, shared strategy, implementation priorities and funding models for a locally led humanitarian movement.Pan Africa ILGA invited DD to support toolkit development and strategic planning around sexual and reproductive justice across East, West, Southern and Central Africa. The work included co-creation, regional consultation, theory-of-change development, and operational toolkits on financial management, digital security, and situational leadership. The process strengthened youth-led member organisations with practical tools for transparency, advocacy and long-term movement resilience.

Digital transformation in health systems was raising new questions about equity, data governance, and coalition leadership. Transform Health Kenya brought us on board to facilitate the co-creation of a 2024–2026 roadmap focused on Universal Health Coverage (UHC), digital technology and data governance. The process brought together a 30-partner coalition to reflect, align and shape shared priorities for inclusive digital health equity in Kenya.

The relationship between civic participation and peacebuilding emerged through an engagement with the African Union (AU) Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). We led the design of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that translated the African Peace and Security Architecture and Agenda 2063 into accessible learning journeys for civil society organisations, journalists and community leaders. The work expanded our appreciation for how learning infrastructure can strengthen civic agency and deepen participation in continental governance processes.

Across democracy, governance and peacebuilding programmes, the challenge of turning evidence into action was becoming increasingly important. Through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID Kenya/East Africa) Office of Democracy, Governance, Peace and Security (DGPS), we supported nine major consortia working across electoral integrity, civic participation, accountable governance, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, social cohesion, anti-corruption, citizen engagement and democratic resilience to strengthen utilisation-focused learning. The work helped programme teams refine learning agendas, identify decision points and embed reflection into adaptive management processes, strengthening the ability of diverse programmes to translate evidence into more responsive and effective governance and peacebuilding practice. 

Institutional stewardship surfaced through the Nexus Consortium in Somalia, a network operating at the intersection of humanitarian response, development and peacebuilding. We facilitated a governance and leadership transformation process that helped the Board strengthen alignment, clarify roles and responsibilities, deepen engagement with partners and strengthen organisational coherence within a complex Somali context.The United Nations Population Fund’s 2Gether 4 SRHR Programme, a joint initiative of the UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNFPA and WHO, invited us to facilitate the development of a resource mobilisation and partnerships framework for East and Southern Africa. The process helped shape an investment-oriented approach to integrated sexual and reproductive health and rights, HIV and gender-based violence services, including domestic financing, convening, evidence-sharing and blended finance pathways.

We worked with Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) as the lead facilitator and thought partner for the Ubora Mashinani Annual Learning Process. The work supported 11 local development organisations in strengthening governance, sustainability, and community-owned development. Through participatory learning, the Minimum Viable Local Development Organisation Canvas and the Public-Private-Philanthropic Partnership model, the process helped local actors sharpen impact roadmaps, diversify income streams and strengthen institutional foundations for long-term resilience, a reality that would soon become tested with the 2025 Funding Freeze.

Akili Dada entered its 18th year with an opportunity to refresh its programme portfolio and align with its 2024–2028 strategy. DD supported a programme design review across Washa, Angaza and Urithi, applying human-centred design and systems thinking to develop standard operating procedures, refreshed logical frameworks and a transition roadmap. The process connected programme renewal with institutional culture and leadership identity.

Partnerships and ecosystem relationships became increasingly important, and for DD, we continued to seed these in our context through structured yet nimble engagements, memberships, and arrangements with Leading Change Network, B Lab Africa, SNDBX Ubuntu, East Africa Philanthropy Network, and Well Made Strategy.

Throughout 2024, we continued to invest in spaces for reflection, dialogue, and collective learning beyond formal client engagements. Through convenings, conversations and storytelling initiatives, practitioners, funders, researchers, policymakers and institution builders were brought together to explore emerging questions around leadership, systems change, governance and social impact. These spaces created opportunities to surface lived experience, document African wisdom and leadership journeys, strengthen peer learning and nurture communities of practice across sectors and geographies.

#DDwithMaqC continued to create room for reflection, dialogue, and public learning. The work was becoming a platform. A place for practice. A place for thought. A place for convening. A place for field-building perspectives and dialogues.

And so, we compiled the lessons from the stalwarts, leaders and practitioners into the first edition on African Luminaries and launched it as a publication on 26 September 2024. Conceived as a living archive of African leadership, wisdom and institution-building, the book brought together stories, reflections and lessons from leaders whose journeys embodied courage, service, innovation and stewardship. The launch created a space for intergenerational dialogue and collective reflection, affirming the importance of documenting African experiences and making them accessible to current and future generations. More than a publication, African Luminaries was emerging as a platform for preserving memory, celebrating leadership and cultivating the values needed to shape Africa’s future. 

By the end of 2024, we were carrying a clearer sense of direction. The future required: institutions capable of generating intelligence; spaces capable of cultivating innovation; and mechanisms capable of aligning capital, trust and opportunity.

The foundations of the Insights Hub, Innovation Lab and Investment Catalyst were becoming increasingly visible. The journey was moving from practice into institutional infrastructure.