Building impact at scale: what is scalability and scaling preparedness?

In September and October, a series of important workshops were held in three countries —Nigeria, Uganda, and Ethiopia—where sustainable and inclusive agri-food system interventions are being piloted as part of the Rethinking Food Markets (RFM) Initiative. The focus of these workshops was to evaluate whether the intervention bundles tested in various country contexts and for different commodities could be scaled, and to identify what actions stakeholders could take to create the right conditions for successful scaling.

The workshops brought together a wide range of participants, including farmers, processors, regulators, policymakers, development experts, researchers, and other local agri-food stakeholders, aiming to ensure that these promising innovations could be expanded to benefit larger user groups.

You can read more about the interventions and key workshop themes here but, for those not familiar with the terms – what does scalability and scaling preparedness mean within the context of development interventions?

Scalability refers to the potential of a pilot project or tested intervention to be expanded from small-scale operations to larger populations while maintaining its effectiveness, impact and feasibility.  Within the RFM initiative, this means moving from the carefully controlled environment of a Randomised Control Trial (RCT), which provide the highest level of evidence in terms of robustness and precision, to the messier reality of farmers in a whole region.

Scaling preparedness, on the other hand, involves systematically assessing whether the necessary conditions are in place to ensure that scaling efforts will succeed.  The concept takes into account factors such as local capacity, policy frameworks, financial resources, and community buy-in.  Importantly, during these workshops, participants also focused heavily on the inclusivity of scaling preparedness: how would participants and stakeholders ensure women and young people, in particular, don’t miss out on the benefits?

How can you start to scale?

Other development professionals can learn from these concepts and workshops including in value chains outside of the agri-food industry.  For successful scaling it is important to recognise that it is not a linear process, but an iterative one – and many of the conditions for success are laid with the initial building of the intervention.  Actors should therefore assess scalability early, even during the pilot project phase, and if the process seems feasible, start planning for scaling early on by identifying opportunities in the enabling environment by using frameworks that assess the potential for replication and expansion.

Actors should also be looking to build or strengthen strategic partnerships, gain buy-in from stakeholders, and use adaptive management techniques to capitalise on where progress is being made on the ground.  Scaling isn’t just about copying and pasting a project into a new area and actors should be flexible and ready to adapt to a new challenge or opportunity in different settings, led by the expertise and will of the beneficiaries.

By keeping an eye of scalability and scaling preparedness, we can move closer to achieving sustainable, large-scale improvements across sectors, and breaking old dependencies.  This will ultimately improve the quality of life for millions of agri-food system actors in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Please get in touch with us using the KISM discussion forum if you would like to learn more.