Although Rwanda was growing at a fast pace and transforming itself into a beacon of excellence for the continent, the pandemic will definitely leave a set of scars behind. The crisis we are experiencing has a triple face: a grave economic situation, accompanied by an increasingly urgent climate catastrophe, and exacerbated by a health emergency.
Our recovery must therefore have the direction of inclusive smart growth: more innovation, more well-being and more sustainability. This is essential to rethinking the direction of growth and also the way in which public and private interact, in order to ensure a long-term sustainable path. The objectives of sustainability and inclusion must cut across this entire transformation and must emerge from a process of consultation and discussion with institutional actors, but above all with citizens and social movements. This "bottom-up” approach allows challenges to be defined in such a way that they speak to the lives of citizens.
This transformative process requires a new approach to policy-making which is referred to as a mission-oriented approach. Missions are tools for transformations aimed at solving crucial social, environmental and technological challenges, by means of a concrete process, characterised by achievable targets, and involving as many sectors as possible; public institutions, social organisations and above all citizens, thus putting the person and the community at the centre of the economy.
This philosophy means that we should start looking beyond GDP as the yardstick for development and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are aimed to provide such a direction and to also highlight the economic, social and environmental challenges on a global scale.
Tackling and solving these challenges requires a fundamental change from traditional industrial policies. It is crucial to move from a logic centred on a list of sectors to be supported, towards a better and more complete identification of problems whose solutions require multiple sectors and actors to finance and develop processes of innovation and transformation.
The idea behind missions is not to start by asking which sectors or technologies should be helped, but rather which problems need to be solved. The key is to think about problems in the most ambitious way possible, involving various economic actors in the solution (public, private and non-profit) and establishing new forms of collaboration at the level of individual projects. Much of the discussion around missions can be conceptualised in terms of major challenges, which in the case of the United Nations are represented by the 17 SDGs. Transforming these challenges into concrete missions is the first step.
Missions should be cross-cutting in terms of sectors and actors involved in the process. In this sense, a "vertical” mission on a theme can have a cross-cutting impact on different economic and social areas. The dynamics are both top-down, in terms of directionality of the challenge and the identification of the mission, and bottom-up, with the activation of projects that involve multiple actors and solve the everyday problems of citizens.
The success of missions requires the fulfilment of a series of conditions, which must be embedded in the process before and during their execution.
First, they need to be bold, inspirational and with social relevance. The missions must be able to inspire the actors involved and have a broad relevance for society. They must be able to connect with the challenges of sustainable development to have an impact on a significant part of the population.
Secondly, missions require citizen involvement. For their definition, implementation and evaluation, missions require citizen participation in public debate. They must also be shared by a healthy number of institutional and social actors, so that they can also be pursued through different political cycles.
Third, they need to be targeted, measurable and time-bound. The missions must have a precise direction. They must be focused, measurable (with tools that capture the overall qualitative impact) and bound by a time limit.
Fourth, missions need to be backed by public sector capacity. Missions require the development of skills and entrepreneurial spirit by the state. Public actors must conceive of themselves as elements of a system that creates and shapes markets and technologies. Among the capacities that the state must assume there are: the search for coordination between different structures that operate by departmental silos; greater flexibility and autonomy of some departments, agencies or other public organisations; a positive approach to risk, linked to learning processes; the possibility of setting a strategic use of public procurement on the entire industrial and social apparatus.
Fifth, ambitious but realistic. The missions must be ambitious in order to motivate the actors involved, but sufficiently realistic to be achieved. The financing of projects, by public and private parties, must be adequate and follow the needs for the realisation of the mission, without constraining its definition with strictly fixed limits or a short-term return perspective.
Finally, cross-cutting and bottom-up. The potential of the missions is maximised by the activation of multiple initiatives between different sectors, actors and disciplines. Several projects contribute to the realisation of missions, as well as to their possible redefinition, through constraints and opportunities that may bubble up during their implementation.
The mission approach presented here provides a lens through which to rethink economic and industrial policy. It is an innovative way to collaborate across sectors inspired by the great challenges we face. It must involve different actors, from the institutional arena to the business world, from universities to the third sector.
JP Fabri is a co-founding partner of Seed, an international focused advisory firm.
www.seedconsultancy.com | jp@seedconsultancy.com