The innovation required to effect economic and social transformation in local municipalities often takes time, resources, information platforms and intensive stakeholder engagements. This article discusses how local universities, municipalities and the HSRC formed “communities of practice” to jointly identify and co-produce innovative solutions for local economic development in Vhembe in Limpopo and OR Tambo in the Eastern Cape.
Municipalities in Vhembe, Limpopo, and OR Tambo in the Eastern Cape need support to entrench innovation in their service delivery mandates, especially in achieving their socioeconomic development priorities. This aligns with the innovation imperative at the core of the government’s 2018–2028 National Framework for Local Economic Development (NFLED). Ideas and aspirations that underpin this policy framework advocate new ways of socioeconomic development in municipalities. This futuristic outlook urges local authorities to apply innovative thinking and use evidence-based tools for meaningful transformation in the living standards of municipal residents.
Over the past three years, local universities and the HSRC forged links with municipalities in Vhembe and OR Tambo to form a community of practice (COP) in each district. A community of practice is a group of individuals or organisations who come together to engage in activities aimed at solving a shared problem. In this case, participants focused on how to jointly generate and share information to promote innovation for municipal socioeconomic development.
HSRC workshop to share innovative solutions for local economic development. Photo by the HSRC
COP origins, evolution and prospects
The idea of a COP focused on evidence-informed local economic development emerged during the finalisation of the NFLED in 2018. However, limits on in-person meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic restricted roleplayers to online preparatory meetings, and most of the groundwork for building the COP kicked off only in the third quarter of 2022.
The Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) was instrumental in conceptualising and financing COP activities, providing guidance on how to align these activities with national innovation policy and to ensure their usefulness in practice. The DSTI selected the two districts in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape because these sites already formed part of the government’s District Development Model (DDM). The DDM is aimed at improving service delivery in municipalities across the country by enabling better coordination between all spheres of government, locally and nationally.
The DSTI also advised on what the ideal composition of the COP needed to be. It was key to include representatives from knowledge producers, such as universities and science councils, as well as government departments, municipalities and non-government actors, such as private businesses and local residents.
COP composition and practices: highlights
A core mission of the University of Venda (UniVen) and Walter Sisulu University (WSU) is to produce scientific data for evidence-informed policy interventions, and this positioned them at the forefront of mobilising local COP participation. UniVen and WSU are located in Vhembe and OR Tambo districts respectively, and collaborated with the HSRC to set up a COP in each district.
Involving the maximum number of participating groups in the COP was both time- and resource-consuming. Universities’ outreach campaigns targeted representatives from local businesses, civil society groups, traditional authorities and other players. In Vhembe district, UniVen leveraged its long-standing relationships with municipalities and traditional leaders to bring them into a shared learning network around using evidence tools for local innovation. Setting up a broad-based COP in OR Tambo took much longer, mainly due to frequent institutional restructuring at WSU.
Interactive practices
The COP activities were standardised around the high-level practices summarised below.
a) Evidence tools awareness, adaptation and use: The HSRC designed information collection and distribution tools to support innovation-driven development in municipalities. One tool was a list of exploratory questions that documented the value a municipality attaches to innovation. Another was a survey of enterprises that operate in a municipal space. This survey could be used to profile innovators and their innovations. While two municipalities in OR Tambo were involved in pilot testing some tools in 2016, using the improved tools in Vhembe signalled a big leap forward in closing the state of the local innovation evidence gap. The respective COPs created shared learning forums in OR Tambo and Vhembe to talk about the purpose, practical use and benefits of the tools. A precondition for effectively using the tools in municipalities without documented evidence about innovation is to assemble databases of potential local stakeholders, such as formal and informal businesses, colleges, industry associations and civil society organisations. UniVen and WSU assembled databases, including contacts of associations in different economic sectors, and periodically added stakeholder information to also prepare for in-depth evidence collection.
b) Coordination mechanisms and shared learning: Regular meetings, face-to-face and online, are vital for a COP to function, self-sustain and propagate its social learning benefits. Therefore, technical administrative meetings were as critical as exchanging knowledge and experiences through workshops and roundtables. Academics at WSU and UniVen fulfilled core roles in multilevel coordination structures and meetings of the COP, including national workshops that the HSRC convened to share, compare and enrich learnings across the two districts.
c) Systematic infusion in municipal governance and operations: Integrating the evidence tools with how municipalities operate was facilitated through the inclusion of municipal officials from OR Tambo and Vhembe in the COP. Municipal participation enabled academics and other participants to learn about self-sustaining ways of infusing the uptake and use of the tools into the municipality through council resolutions and similar policy governance instruments. In OR Tambo, WSU contributed innovation principles to local planning exercises – for example, the Nyandeni municipal village master plan, a municipal planning document that incorporated innovation-orientated SMMEs in its development framework. UniVen pilot tested a framework it crafted to integrate innovation into Local Economic Development (LED) strategies of Vhembe municipalities. Examples of specific activities included municipal innovation capability strengthening, and, through the COP, jointly identifying catalytic innovations to restructure local socioeconomic landscapes.
d) Engaging innovation champions: The NFLED calls for a rapid shift in local government priorities, but municipalities in OR Tambo and Vhembe did not have the expertise and resources for a quick turnaround. To close this capacity gap, the DSTI financed a stipend to deploy innovation champions in the local economic development units of municipalities for 24 months. Academic leads at UniVen and WSU recruited the champions from among unemployed graduates residing in a district, and also supervised and capacitated them. As the innovation champions developed their capabilities and grew in self-confidence, they took on larger roles, in addition to providing dedicated capacity to operationalise the innovation agenda embedded in the NFLED. They also played a vital role in growing the COP, enabling the emerging learning collectives to execute an expanding menu of practices.
(e) Publicity and promotion: Joining a COP automatically invites participants to share their experiences, learn from others, jointly reflect on learnings, and promote the uptake and use of learnings. The Vhembe COP organised a conference with the Thulamela Business Forum that showcased how communities of practice can advance local innovation. University communications channels were leveraged to distribute media releases, generating interview opportunities that expanded outreach. SALGA (South African Local Government Association) Eastern Cape, for instance, convened a cross-district learning initiative to share innovation for LED experiences unfolding in Vhembe district with other LED stakeholders. This SALGA event raised awareness of COP activities but also nurtured prospects for grassroots COP building beyond Vhembe and ORT.
Concluding insights
Tracking the evolution of the incipient COPs in Vhembe and ORT over their first two years (mid-2022 to mid-2024) helps to compare if their composition and practices unfolded as initially envisioned in 2018. As time went by, local universities and municipal officials became the main participants in the COPs with the respective universities being the driving force behind the COPs. Furthermore, both UniVen and WSU almost exclusively relied on the DSTI-funded innovation champions for holding the COPs together. Players representing a broader range of local innovation stakeholders participated sporadically in some COP initiatives but their regular involvement in co-governing the COPs did not materialise.
Initiating a COP around evidence tools for innovation in municipalities dovetails with the principles and goals of the NFLED (2018–2028). The NFLED content also served as a dynamic pulling force to attract local stakeholders, stimulate their involvement in collective learning and streamline COP practices. Giving equal weight to all practices that define a COP is unrealistic when a COP lacks resources to engage in all potential interactive practices. In such cases, a COP must focus on how practices can reinforce each other and give more weight to practices with the highest multiplier outcomes. The positive spinoffs from evidence use, for example, can be magnified by proactive innovation champions and a council resolution backed by operating procedures.
Research contacts and acknowledgement
This article was written by Dr Peter T. Jacobs, a senior research director, and Mandy Booys, a senior researcher, in the HSRC’s Equitable Education and Economies Division.
The following researchers and teams contributed to the community of practice work: Dr Sikhulumile Sinyolo and Dr Tholang Mokhele from the HSRC, Phila Dyantyi (a former HSRC researcher), and the LIAT COP teams at the University of Venda in Limpopo and the Walter Sisulu University in the Eastern Cape.
