What is social innovation, and why

Thinking about how to approach challenges as opportunities is as crucial to social causes as it is to startups and big business

Included in the programme of the 2018 South African Innovation Summit was the Social Innovation Summit, powered by Activate! This is a network that aims to empower young African entrepreneurs.

the importance of supporting, sponsoring and amplifying the ideas that are coming to life close to home, Activate! Change Drivers chief executive Chris Meintjes explains: “Some of these ideas could grow to change the possibilities for our society in the future, and so many of these ideas are grown out of personally experiencing a challenge on the ground, on a day-to-day basis.”

Big business has long understood the value of listening to the customer in focus groups and, of late, in data gleaned from buying behaviour — so it makes sense to tackle problems at a grassroots level, to benefit and empower customers.

Technology’s bad rap as the preserve of Silicon Valley elites does stem from certain truths: the industry is still inaccessible, expensive and notoriously exclusionary to women, people of colour and anyone who doesn’t fit the “tech bro” or “geek” mould. But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the technologies getting most media attention are not the only ones under development: there are also exciting innovations taking place to assist the industries that need it most.

In a panel titled “Investing for Growth in Food and Agritech”, the topic under discussion was how best to empower those growing the food that feeds our country’s population. Solutions arise in surprising places: among the social innovators of 2018 are Township Farmers, a Khayelitsha initiative overseeing a cycle of planting, harvest, trade and replanting to provide food for the township’s early childhood development centres and orphanages.

The project works with the Safe Haven Co-operative, which aims to assign agriculture graduates to abandoned farms and address issues with current water and manure usage, and Arum, a producer of organic fertiliser made from human hair waste. In the world of agriculture, technology can provide much-needed supReaffirming