In a post-pandemic context, with countless definitions of the ‘Future of Work’ bombarding students – and adding to their growing angst around future employability – it becomes difficult for graduates to discern which skills to pay attention to and develop further.
In its Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum lists attributes like “analytical thinking and innovation,” “complex problem-solving,” and “creativity, originality and initiative” amongst its top 10 professional skills required by 2025.
Design thinking as an academic offering nurtures these essential skills from the outset of its programmes and courses, such as those offered by the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT.
“With design thinking being an approach to complex problem-solving, rooted in human needs analysis and understanding, as well as applied through collaborative creativity, incorporating design thinking exposure into a graduate’s skills arsenal can only be beneficial,” says Lucille Roberts, Head of Programmes at the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT.
Lucille continues, “Design thinking can also enhance a graduate’s ability to navigate uncertainty, thereby further strengthening their competitive advantage in a crowded job market.”
Putting people and context at the centre
Recognising people – including their needs, contextual constraints and parameters, aspirations and preferences – is at the core of design thinking. Therefore, this human-centricity, underpinned by empathy, is the determining criteria for a given design thinking solution’s suitability or efficacy.
Consequently, this further solidifies design thinking as a top consideration for further skills development, with human-centred skills such as “leadership and social influence” also listed on the World Economic Forum’s top-10 skills.
“Our courses are designed to build communication and collaboration skills in diverse team settings,” says Lucille. “In this context, diversity isn’t narrowed down to only consider cultural and disciplinary diversity, but also actively seeks out neuro- and contextual diversity in the team makeup to further inform and enrich the solutions teams might propose as part of the design thinking process.”
As the philosophy underpinning design thinking clearly states, diversity in every spectrum - from race, culture, world view and perspective to skills, experience and insights - is vital for addressing the complex challenges faced by contemporary society.
Collaboration in diverse, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary teams is a characteristic of design thinking in action.
Responsiveness to context - the ability to deeply connect with local realities and appreciate local knowledge and systems - is necessary to develop appropriate and effective solutions.
Building creative confidence towards personal mastery
Listed fourth on the World Economic Forum list, “Creativity, originality and initiative” is another key skill to be nurtured amongst graduates entering the workforce. Building creative confidence is central to what schools like the Hass Plattner d-school Afrika do and nurture in the students that enrol for their programmes.
The fast pace of scientific and digital progress, combined with socio-political and economic uncertainty, requires a mindset that can imagine the future to create solutions that are not only based on data and certainty.
In the case of business, design thinking’s relevance has been noted across sectors and in a range of contexts. For example, according to McKinsey & Company, design thinking “can deliver a compelling end product and be disruptive enough to transform a company’s culture.
“The methodology is based on the insight that optimising individual touchpoints is insufficient to deliver a truly satisfactory overall journey—what is required is an end-to-end redesign. It is also informed by the understanding that consumers today do not separate products or services from the experience of buying and owning them. As a result, the entire “package” needs to be carefully designed.”
Starting the design-led journey
Design Thinking is more than a process or method used to solve a set of challenges. It's a mindset, a way of thinking that can be applied over again to new challenges in any setting. Design thinkers learn how to see real-world problems and use tools and techniques in a way that leads to innovative solutions no matter what their location or context.
The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika's Foundation Programme in Design Thinking offers students a deep dive into the Design-led thinking mindset. According to Richard Perez, founding director of the d-school Afrika, "Students gain life-long skills for the future world of work and increase their likelihood of employment as we enable them to create human-centred solutions to real-world problems."
During this course, students will be introduced to working in culturally and cognitively diverse teams from various disciplines, discovering innovative digital learning tools, and building creative confidence.
Join the class of 2023. Apply for the Foundation Programme in Design Thinking today: https://dschoolafrika.org/learn-design-thinking/academic-student-courses/foundation-programme-in-design-thinking/
Africa's first d.confestival - a design thinking conference-meets-festival hosted by the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT in October - brought together a boisterous mix of change-makers from business, government, education, and social development to celebrate the success of design thinking globally and explore its potential for dialling up Africa's creative potential to solve complex problems across the continent.
For George Kembel, entrepreneur, educator, investor, and co-founder of the Stanford d-school in the US, design thinking has almost nothing to do with thinking as we know it. “If you look into them,” he says, “most of the design thinking practices are invitations to a different way of being, a more embodied way of being — helping us to feel another person, to use our emotional intelligence to understand the needs that really matter.” For him, design thinking seeks mostly to harness empathy.
Kembel was a keynote speaker at this year’s d.confestival, held in October at the new HPI d-school building at UCT’s middle campus, one of the greenest academic buildings in Africa.
Hosted by the d-school Afrika and the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA), the conference-meets-festival hybrid event celebrated design thinking’s global successes while exploring its potential application in Africa. A major focus was on design thinking’s ability to deliver value in an uncertain, volatile future. Will its experimental, iterative, creative, and empathetic nature still work for complex problem-solving in the complex world of tomorrow?
For some, design thinking’s potential, at least for Africa, lies in its spirit of empathy, which it shares with the African philosophy of ubuntu.
“Ubuntu offers design thinking a complementary lens for looking at teamwork and collaborative, participatory processes,” says transdisciplinary industrial designer, educator, researcher, and consultant Mugendi M’Rithaa who also spoke at the conference. “By its very nature, ubuntu seeks to build consensus.”
For Hoda Mostafa, Center for Learning and Teaching Director at the American University in Cairo, who hosted a session called Creative Problem Solving and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Contexts, design thinking is authentic and familiar to people in Africa. “It’s reflected in how we tell stories, invite conversation, and work together as communities.”
A first-of-its-kind event, the d-convestival married the rigour of an academic conference with the boisterous, interactive experience of a cultural festival, giving international innovators, design thinkers, and change-makers from business, government, education, and social development a novel opportunity to try out the design thinking approach within an African context.
The d-school was officially opened at a gala reception on Thursday, 13 October, with the unveiling of the plaque ceremony for the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika building. In attendance were d-school founder, Prof Dr Hasso Plattner, UCT Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT Richard Perez, and Andreas Peschke, German Ambassador to South Africa. Once the formalities were concluded, guests took to the dance floor to celebrate well into the night in the company of house trio Mi Casa, and DJ Rene The Frenchman.
“I am convinced that design thinking is the best mindset and toolset for solving complex problems,” says Uli Weinberg, GDTA president and director of the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam. “Its implications for Africa are staggering, for designing what really matters on the continent.”
“It’s all about the students,” says Prof Dr Hasso Plattner. “Whether they come from Cameroon, Nigeria or the suburbs of Cape Town, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that we can educate them to trust themselves that they can innovate.”
Ralitsa Diana Debrah, design educator and researcher at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, believes that design thinking, once taken into African communities, will unlock local creative resources. “Once we shift this tool into local communities,” she says, “it will give us the chance to actually address local problems using untapped indigenous knowledge systems, a strength within the African context.”
This is one of many strengths Paul Steenkamp, founder and chief executive officer of Jack Frost, a problem-solving consultancy, says can now be amplified and built upon with design thinking. “There is this opportunity to consolidate and acknowledge all that makes us African,” he says, “and channel it into solving our greatest problems.”
Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT, Richard Perez, says that design thinking is incredibly effective and has significant potential to be scaled up in Africa precisely because it feels familiar.
“And that is key if we on the continent want to respond to the challenges we face locally and globally by unlocking our collective creative potential by using this ubuntu-like approach,” he says. “It seems only natural.”
The d-school Afrika is a member of the GDTA, an alliance of 22 educational institutions dedicated to teaching, researching, and developing the methods and mindsets of design thinking. UCT is also one of only three institutions in the world to have design schools. The other two are Stanford University in the United States and Potsdam University in Germany.
Day three of the d.confestival started with the clicks, claps and stamps of a storm, even though the sun was shining in Cape Town. Participants engaged with each other through a cultural connection led by creativity facilitator Colin Skelton, where the crowd moved as one, mimicking the sounds and patterns of rainfall and thunder. This non-verbal communication and collaboration were exemplary of the day, as designers, entrepreneurs and practitioners sought to learn from and with each other.
George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of Stanford’s d.school, started the day’s learning journey through a discussion on the ‘move to mastery’. Inspired by the passing of the torch in Buddhism from one Dalai Lama to the next, Kembel shone a light on what it means to surrender to a deeper understanding of the world, and our connections with each other, beyond our thinking minds:
“Our unconscious, emotional mind has so much more horsepower than our rational conscious mind. We just haven’t grasped how to harness that power yet.”
He went on to describe our inner workings as being like a weather system, with its own patterns and energy, which we don’t fully understand nor know how to predict. It drew attention back to the collaborative pitter-patter of rain that started the day as participants connected on a level beyond the rational.
This emotional connection was most evident through the afternoon’s World Café exploration, replicating and reimagining the power of spontaneous conversation of informal coffee shop chat. Participants shared stories and insights in the name of the biggest challenges and opportunities of teaching and learning in design thinking across corporate business, youth entrepreneurship, social development and the public sector.
These insights were synthesised into a meaningful and practical platform of words and actions to be taken up by all after the d.confestival ended. Hoda Mostafa, Director at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, and a key contributor on the day crystalised the importance of this sentiment, marking the true junction of Afrika’s design thinking story:
“This won’t be the end of the conversation; it is just the beginning, and hopefully, we can take this forward to change Afrika for the better.”
UCT Vice-Chancellor, Mamokgethi Phakeng, grabbed this torch and continued the ambition of everyone in the room, as well as those attending online, highlighting the power and value of what was discussed, shared and felt over the three days:
“The underlying objective of design thinking is to change the world. We have to embrace this through understanding our relationship with our environment.”
It was a challenge, and an invitation, for all to take on, symbolizing why design thinking matters now.
Watch the highlights of the three days below:
The second day of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika's d.confestival kicked off with even more energy and vibrance. The day's discussions delved even deeper into some of the complex challenges society and businesses face today while celebrating the role design thinking plays in these arenas.
Interrogating what leadership design could look like for the future
The first keynote dialogue included JP Morgan's Sam Yen, HR executive and business coach, Jeanett Modise, and Jack Frost-founder Paul Steenkamp, discussing 'New leadership mindsets that enable creativity, innovation and motivation in a life-centred world of work'.
"In our current business leadership structures, line managers are the toughest nut to crack," observed Paul Steenkamp. "In practice, this business community is the most influential, and their buy-in is imperative in getting things done in new, more innovative ways."
Ubuntu inspired leadership
In the following panel discussion, 'I am because we are: Charting an Ubuntu-inspired roadmap for inclusive, responsible design leadership', Ulrich Meyer-Höllings facilitated a diverse panel of leaders examining the case for non-hierarchical leadership models with the Afrikan philosophy at its core.
"Ubuntu offers design thinking a complimentary lens on how to look at teamwork, collaborative and participatory processes," says panellist and Transdisciplinary Industrial Designer, Educator, and Researcher Mugendi M'rithaa. He further proposed a revised version of the Ubuntu philosophy's definition for the business and societal context as: "I participate; therefore, I am."
Seeing design-thinking in action
Speakers delved deeper into the discipline's various real-world applications in the four parallel sessions themed Design Thinking in Practice. In one of the sessions, practitioner Colin Skelton unpacked how the human body could be used as a design tool. "Our bodies are domains of learning," says Skelton. "Through design thinking, we're able to celebrate the body as a mobile laboratory."
As these sessions concluded, delegates were taken on d.safari tours to various destinations in and around Cape Town, including Montebello, the V & A Waterfront and Mitchell's Plain, to immerse themselves in ongoing innovation projects with design thinking at their core.
An opening night to remember
The day ended on a high note with the official opening and unveiling of the plaque ceremony for the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika building with Prof Dr Hasso Plattner, UCT Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT Richard Perez, and Andreas Peschke, German Ambassador to South Africa.
"This is all about and for the students," says Prof Dr Hasso Plattner. "This institution has the potential to become a lighthouse of creative thinking on the African continent", says Andreas Peschke.
Guests took to the dance floor into the night with sounds from house trio Mi Casa, and DJ Rene The Frenchman.
The final day will look at Teaching, and Learning Design Thinking in Afrika and weave insights from World Café-style sessions and conclude with a call to action beyond the d.confestival.
The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika opened the doors to its new home on the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) middle campus with the launch of the d.confestival on 12 October. This three-day conference-meets-festival, themed “Design thinking matters now!”, is the first of its kind on the African continent", and is accessible to participants streaming virtually, together with live delegates and contributors coming from as far as Germany, Egypt, Kenya, Brazil and Ghana, to name a few.
The event kicked off on a high and musical note, with a “Creative Connection” session facilitated by Peter Schaupp and the Boomwhackers Orchestra. This was followed by the keynote dialogue with the founder of the Hasso Plattner Institute and the Hasso Plattner Foundation, Professor Hasso Plattner, who was in conversation with Richard Perez, director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT. Prof Plattner discussed what he anticipates for the future of design thinking and human-centred design in business, science and society. "Government projects alone cannot solve challenges and social injustices in Africa. Society has to solve it…Trust yourself that you can innovate", he said. Perez added, "We all have the capacity to be creative. Design is too important to be left to the designers only. We all need to be involved".
The Cape Town d.confestival is also a celebration of the Global Design Thinking Alliance's (GDTA) fifth anniversary. Founding members of the GDTA, including George Kembel, Bernie Roth, Richard Perez, Claudia Nicolai, and Uli Weinberg, participated in a fireside conversation focused on the growth and impact of design thinking as a global movement. A birthday celebration followed with design thinking-themed cupcakes and the singing of the birthday song in a language of each delegate’s choice.
A panel discussion, titled Creative Problem-Solving and Innovation in Cross-Cultural Contexts led into parallel sessions that allowed virtual and in-person delegates to connect in small breakaway groups to explore design thinking in different contexts. In one of the sessions, delegates explored a case study from Chile, where human-centred design is used to help local farming communities carry out government-funded projects. Jenni van Niekerk, d.confestival programme curator, who facilitated the discussion in Spanish and English explained that language need not be a barrier to collaboration, adding, “We have so much more in common between Africa and South America than in Africa and Europe, which is where we look to for so much of our knowledge base. While we are developing our knowledge base, how much more would we have access to if we collaborated and shared solutions with continents with similar economic and social challenges and a shared history of colonialism? There's so much that can be done.”
Throughout the day, delegates enjoyed entertainment and experiences that allowed them to connect through music, dance, and food with a distinctly ‘Afrikan’ theme.
There are two days of the conference remaining. Day two includes d.safari tours across Cape Town's innovation ecosystem to witness design thinking in action and the official opening of the HPI d-school building, home to the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town.
Stay tuned for more highlights of the festivities! Subscribe to keep up with the latest news, insights and programmes from the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town.
Crucial educational indicators on the African continent are lagging. And this is despite huge improvements in pre and primary school enrolment since the turn of the century, and the high percentage of African countries’ GDP investment in education, which is on par with the highest in the world. And now, as the worst of a global pandemic subsides, Africa confronts an aftermath, in which educational gains have been reversed, and fissures have grown wider.
The basic building blocks of quality education must be addressed, and urgently. Equal access for genders, equipped teachers and decent resources are essential – especially if Africa is to tap into the wealth of human capital that exists in its burgeoning youth population. But while we work to improve these key markers, it’s also important to ask ourselves: What future is education preparing us for?
“Preparing for the world of work can be a nerve-wracking experience in this day and age,” says Richard Perez, founding director of UCT’s Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika, who explains how technology, globalisation and the rapid rate of environmental change are transforming our basic understanding about what we need to know and the skills that will be essential to thriving in the future. “The most relevant skills today take a human-centred approach that is big on problem exploration, empathy and co-creation, understands the value in connecting with local realities, knowledge and systems, and recognises the power of creativity and wild ideas.”
"We must focus on future learning skills: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. And we can even take it a step further by including the Design Thinking mindset in education programmes built on empathy experimentation and engagement principles to ensure inclusivity”, adds Claudia Nicolai, Academic Director of the HPI School of Design Thinking.
Global design thinking for global education
In a global community effort, the d-school Afrika is joining 12 Global Design Thinking Alliance members in tackling the topic of basic education challenges in Africa and beyond and the future outcomes of education. As we co-develop solutions, we’ll keep in mind the targets of the fourth United Nations sustainable development goal of quality education, including equal access, affordability and relevance.
The Global Design Thinking Alliance is a network of institutions that teach, research, and further develop the methods and mindsets of Design Thinking. Bringing together Design Thinking schools from 12 countries on four continents, the Global Design Thinking Challenge focuses on sustainable learning in schools in Africa and beyond.
From a design-thinking perspective, we wish to challenge established notions of what education must look like and instead centre learning. We hope to build on the principles of experimentation, engagement and empathy to impact the learning environment in all its facets, whether we are looking at challenges related to students, teachers, administrators, policymakers or the system as a whole.
“The goal of this global impact initiative is to challenge current educational systems, bring the Design Thinking mindsets to schools, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all," says Programme Lead Sherif Osman.
Multidisciplinary student teams from each institution will collaborate in their local contexts and apply design thinking to develop innovative solutions ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. This way, we work together to connect a global problem with meaningful impact at the local level.
Our learning approach is to combine Design Thinking from a life-centred perspective with human-centeredness and systems thinking. We apply life-centred design to an innovation process; we keep in mind the entire planet. We zoom out to view the big picture, and we zoom in to discover even the most minor details. We look far ahead into the future and consider all possible consequences when developing a solution to a problem. The Global Design Thinking Challenge runs for four weeks, kicking off at the Design Thinking ImpAct Conference on September 15th at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The winning teams have the opportunity to present their most inspiring solutions at the d.confestival in Cape Town on October
Richard Perez, founding director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town, speaks to Benito Vergotine on The Honest Truth show on SmileFm about design thinking and the upcoming d.confestival. Listen!
The Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town, together with the Global Design Thinking Alliance (GDTA), will be hosting the third d.confestival, previously hosted in Potsdam, Germany in 2012 and 2017.
This year’s event will run from 12 to 14 October. As Africa’s first Global Design Thinking event, this three-day conference-meets-festival will take place at the HPI d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town. The hybrid event will be hosted live and will also be accessible to virtual participants.
Themed “Design thinking matters now,” the d.confestival will bring together international innovators, design thinkers and change makers from business, government, education and the social development sector to exchange ideas, share best practices, and map the future direction for design thinking practice to deliver value and impact in our world. Keynote speakers include German entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) Prof Hasso Plattner, Stanford d-School co-founder and executive director, George Kembel, and UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng.
Director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT, Richard Perez says that the d.confestival is an incredible opportunity for us to connect the global design thinking community, who are curious about design thinking as a human centred framework and mindset to solving complex problems., “To officially put us on the global stage as leaders in Design-led Thinking on the continent. Africa is a continent brimming with creative potential and this, together with design thinking’s human-centred problem-solving approach, has the potential to birth powerful responses to the challenges we face not just on the continent but around the world”
UCT’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng says that since the d-school was established at the university “we’ve seen how design-led thinking can unleash graduates’ potential to lead in diverse contexts, work across disciplines and tap into their creativity to respond creatively to real-world challenges.”
People attending the unique event, which will merge the rigour of an academic conference with a festive interactive experience, will also be able to experience the brand new Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika building, situated on UCT’s middle campus.
An architectural focal point, the building has been designed in such a way as to allow people, who may not be entering the building as students, to interact with the building, pass underneath its big, curving glass roof, and feel the energy and passion of what is happening inside and around it.
Designed by KMH Architects in Cape Town, the project began in 2017 and had to meet strict sustainability requirements from the beginning to fit in with the university’s sustainability goals. A major target was for the building to be granted a 6-star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of South Africa.
To be certified and become the greenest building in academia on the continent, the d-school will have to prove sustainable across nine categories, from adopting environmental management principles during construction, to encouraging the use of alternative transport and improving surrounding socio-economic conditions.
“So, it’s an awesome building,” says Perez. “But it has an awesome purpose and responsibility too. From the start, we imagined a building that would become a birthplace for the teaching and learning of the mindset that leads to the bright ideas needed to secure a better future for Africa and the world.”
Positioned as the centre of excellence in design-led thinking in Africa, the d-school has empowered people with design thinking capabilities since 2015, enabling them to create human-centred solutions to problems faced by an ever-changing world. UCT is one of just three institutions in the world to have a d-school, the other two being Stanford University in the United States and Potsdam University in Germany. Together with 22 other educational institutions that teach, research and further develop the methods and mindsets of design thinking, the d-School is a member of the Global Design Thinking Alliance, established in 2017.
First as an award-winning engineering student at UCT, now as a technopreneur and product manager in fintech, Ntsako Mgiba has discovered how design thinking principles can innovate business and tech in Africa.
How do you secure a home without reliable electricity, access to Wi-Fi, or an official and visible street address?
These questions have perplexed and frustrated big-name security companies eager to do business in South Africa’s township communities, limiting the development of this market segment. Not that the need doesn’t exist. Although statistics tell us that home break-ins are more common in white and affluent neighbourhoods, this demographic is also more likely to report them for insurance claims. Township households still suffer the same or worse fate – it’s just that these crimes largely go unreported in their neighbourhoods.
Aspiring technopreneur Ntsako Mgiba is all too familiar with this discrepancy. Some years ago, while living with his aunt in a township in Mpumalanga, thieves broke into the house while everyone was sleeping and stole laptops, smartphones, and other tech worth tens of thousands of rands. There was no alarm or security system. A few weeks later, as he resumed his studies in mechatronics at the University of Cape Town, his aunt informed him that burglars had returned for a second time.
Angry at the lack of protection afforded to his aunt, Mgiba and his flatmate, finance student Ntando Shezi, began experimenting with ideas for an alarm that would meet the needs of township residents. At the time they were participating in UCT Upstarts, a ‘social innovation challenge’ launched by the university in 2015 to support students to develop novel business ideas.
It didn’t take long to realise that any solution they proposed would have to go well beyond savvy tech. The series of pop-up classes and workshops they were attending as part of the Upstarts competition helped them understand that knowing their potential users was vital to the success of their innovation. This, Mgiba would learn, is one of the principles of design thinking, a human centric, problem-solving mindset and toolkit that is rapidly gaining ground around the world.
“Design thinking was kind of infused into the programme,” recalls Mgiba. “You had to speak to users, you had to validate concepts, we did rapid prototyping – these are all core design thinking concepts.”
The design-thinking principles were reinforced by the formal curriculum, which, today, has been incorporated across the engineering faculty with courses presented by the University’s Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking, or d-school Afrika, one of only three such university-based d-schools in the world.
The design-thinking approach is so effective because it shows students how to break down complex, real-world problems and generate fresh solutions that address the needs and struggles of people. Those lessons came in handy in the development of Jonga, the home alarm – and company – that Mgiba and Shezi eventually established.
As Mgiba explained in an article in The Guardian, at the core Jonga’s development was understanding the reasons why his aunt’s household, like many others in townships, had to make do with only the basic home security measures – burglar bars, dogs, and lapsed alarm contracts – and then addressing each challenge with bespoke solutions. Jonga’s battery is good for six months on a single charge, so it works even when ESKOM doesn’t; the alarm is also wireless and easy to install, so no additional costs are incurred. It communicates wirelessly with a phone app. And, critically, its monthly charges are a fraction of those paid in the suburbs.
“As an engineer, you design things for people and for people to interact with,” says Mgiba. “It’s extremely important that you put the user or the person at the centre of anything that you design.”
This approach not only helped Mgiba and Shezi win the Upstarts competition, but it earned them top honours in the Santam Safety Ideas Challenge in 2017, saw them named the Africa winner in the Global Social Venture competition that same year, and took them to a top-five spot at the Diageo Social Tech Challenge.
From the beginning, looking at the big picture – a fundamental of design thinking – has been embedded in Jonga: jonga, after all, means “to look” in isiXhosa. It’s allowed them to imagine the growth of their business through a partnership with Coca-Cola and its Bizniz in a Box spaza shops, as well as further exploration of opportunities in South Africa’s wealthier suburbs.
Mgiba insists that design thinking is the perfect tool for aspiring African entrepreneurs, not only because of its emphasis on empathy with the end user, but because its rapid prototyping and adaptative tendencies make it fit-for-purpose for navigating the development and business challenges unique to Africa – a place where need is often overwhelming and variables fluctuate. Mgiba seeks to bring a design thinking focus into his job as product manager for local fintech start-up, Yoco, which is providing novel financial solutions to the country’s underserved small- and medium-sized enterprises, and even beyond this role to an informal community of over 200 young black founders he has brought together.
“Design thinking is a very common school of thought among us,” Mgiba says. “We may not all call it by that name, but definitely the principles and the tenets – user-centredness, prototyping, adapting – are being embraced among African entrepreneurs.”
And given that there are vast, under-served communities across the continent just waiting for the right product or service to meet their needs, the opportunities for African entrepreneurs that are prepared to think a little differently, seem endless to Mgiba.
“I think we are on the right track. This is a mindset that can help change how business and tech work for good in Africa.”
Richard Perez is the founding director of Africa’s first school dedicated to Design Thinking, the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town, which offers the Foundation Programme in Design Thinking.