Turkana through the lens of complexity

A project in Turkana, North Kenya

People want answers; they want to know what they have to do to make things succeed. But in a complex world there is uncertainty, there can be sudden shocks and shifts, and there are many connected causes to many complex outcomes. This may not be news to the Turkana, but it is not popular with managers. They want to know what ‘embracing complexity’ has to offer and, specifically how complexity theory – the behaviour of situations that open evolutionary and complex  – might help them. Managers are very pleased if they can be offered some shiny new tools – ‘nonlinear feedback’ control tools or ‘spotting emergence’ tools – for their management toolbox; they are less keen on the suggestion that they need to throw away the toolbox and acquire a softer, bigger, more squidgy sort of complexity sports bag instead.

So, the question is, is complexity theory ‘useful’? Does it chime as a description of how things are and does it shed any light on the questions of what to do, how to be, how to act in a complex world?

With all this in mind, I was lucky enough to be asked by Oxfam to take my complexity lens to Turkana, in North Kenya. Oxfam has been working is this region for many years. The bare facts of the region are – one million people four doctors, hardly any roads, 10% literate, mainly pastoralists with some fishing and a bit of agriculture, droughts of increasing regularity, harsh climate, insecurity and marginalisation. Not an easy life.

So off I went – to meet staff – present and past, beneficiaries, government, private sector, local agencies and other INGOs and the local people I went to meet on my travels.

Complexity theory is…

I needed to have a pithy statement of the essence of what complexity theory is saying about the ‘way things are’, the nature of things.  So here it is, as pithy as I can get. Complexity theory:

• emphasises that things are interconnected, synergistically – that is to say we can’t just add up the differing strands of a problem as strands interact, affect each other
• emphasises path dependency and context-sensitivity – that both  history and the particularity of local conditions shape what happens and how interventions impinge
• tells us that the future may change, may ‘tip’ into something quite different, with some new emergent features that we could not in general have imagined or predicted.

These statements shaped the questions I placed in my soft-fabric, colourful complexity sports bag:

• Do interventions look for synergies, look to join things up?
• Are interventions sensitive to context, shaped by the particularity of the local conditions – take account of the work of other agencies, of the detail of the local conditions – environmental, social, actions or attitudes of particular leaders or outcomes of specific events?
• Is there much attention paid to the past – what happened, what worked, what is the particular nature of the region and people and history and culture that influences how you would try to help?
• Do staff look around and beyond the horizon? Is attention paid to potential looming ‘big’ tipping points? Is there recognition of shifting trends in the local communities or changes in policy of behaviour of private sector or government? Is attention given to un-looked-for success or unexpected failure?

So these are the questions I explored, with lots of interviews and travels into Turkana and reading and digging around.

What I found…

Systemic synergistic working

Hunger Safety Nets

There were some really great examples of joined-up thinking. For example, the Hunger Safety Net Project  https://www.hsnp.or.ke/ provided cash instead of food in times of crisis. This is of course much easier when roads are poor and distances are large; it reduces the risk of resources ‘disappearing’. The cash was provided via smartcards which could be used in the shops of traders situated quite often in remote villages. The technology is powered by solar panels and enables transfer of money onto these cards. This can be spent on food available in the trading posts – or it could be spent on school fees or clothes, giving some choice and autonomy. The smart cards were enabled in the main by the thumb prints of women rather than the men – empowering women and making it more likely that the money is spent on the family. So, this project combines humanitarian and development goals, in that it not only tackles immediate starvation in times of drought, but it stimulates the local economy and empowers women and gives some choice on how the money is spent. Even better, Oxfam then saw an opportunity for supporting fishermen and fish traders by supporting them in methods of drying and storing fish so that the money could be spent on local dried fish, thus further stimulating the economy.   

Context-specific approaches

Government public health initiative

The Kenyan government, in a completely well-intentioned desire for fairness and standardisation, had a plan to implement a public health initiative. The plan was to employ two health workers for every 5000 people and provide a dispensary. The training for the health workers will cover all aspects of public health and will take 45 days. The trouble is that in Turkana this is not so easy, as distances are large, and the population is spread out. It is hard to find people to train who can travel from their families for the length of the training, and hard to find people from outside the region who can cope with the conditions. So, implementation, at the time of my visit,  had stalled and nothing much had happened. And the government seemed reluctant to allow a different model to be developed as they want ‘one size fits all’.

Valuing the past

Taking the time to explore – the context, its history, from many perspectives

We tend to feel, when we come new into post, that, with our experience from other places, we can make our mark, take a new approach. We can feel we are expected to be ‘a new broom that sweeps clean’. But do we take enough time to understand the region we are now working in, to get to grips with its complexities, with its history, with the results of past initiatives? Do we work to build on existing relationships, are we tentative for a while, do we listen? Or do we prefer primarily to build on our work in other regions, rely on our own experience? In some of my interviews, I rather got the impression that relying on personal past experience trumped taking the time to talk to people, explore the current context in Turkana, its history.

It did take some effort to dig around to find out who used to work there, find out how to contact them and arrange to have a chat. It was very fruitful though; the people I spoke to seemed to appreciate being asked, were considered and nuanced in their reflections, took time to send me reports they had squirreled away on home computers, and helped me to find others to talk to. People told me how they had sometimes learned the hard way what worked and what did not in Turkana. They explained how the systemic, synergistic programmes I was finding, like the Hunger Safety New, took lots of trial and error to develop. They told me how long it took to build relationships of trust, and how crucial those relationships were in times of crisis, when hard evidence was slight, but experience told that things were amiss.

Complexity emphasises this path-dependent, historically-informed way of working. And my research caused me to question anew whether we value the past enough? As Mark Twain said, ‘history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes’!

Tipping points

Dams, oil and elections

As I interviewed people, I would ask them about the past, the present and the future; about small, local things and wider trends and changes. Regarding the future, I asked them what they saw on the horizon that could materially affect things. I got some very clear answers:

For example, there are moves to build a dam across the river that feeds Lake Turkana. If this goes ahead, so I was told, the lake will become so saline that fish will not be able to survive and 20% of the livelihoods in the region will be lost; the fishermen were very clued up on this.

Then there is the recent discovery of oil. If the Turkana can be part of the planning, and benefit from the profits in a meaningful way, this could bring welcome wealth, open up infrastructure, encourage investment. If handled poorly, it could make things even more difficult for people already beleaguered and insecure.

Finally there are the upcoming national elections. Many people felt that if the Turkana were able to elect leaders who would champion their cause, ensure public funds are spent wisely, it could make a big difference.

So there are several large hairy big political potential tipping points hitting the region and my interest was in the extent to which these were in focus. How can there be balance between implementing agreed programmes and monitoring their success and thinking around, ahead, above, between? Do our processes and mindsets allow for spotting potentially show-stopping opportunities and threats? Or do we get caught up in doing – and measuring – what we are doing?

So what does this suggest?

I could go on… These are just highlights and stories of what I found and if this seems interesting do read the full report.

So what did I feel? Well, I did think the underlying idea of looking to the past, digging deeply into the present and looking to the future does hold up. Seeking to establish a multi-layered, systemic, historically-informed baseline that can shape strategies and actions is well worth doing, together with allowing adaptability to the particularities of the context, responding to change and keeping an eye out for potential big hairy tipping points. And I also felt that staff and others have the ability to do this – and indeed do do much of this, just sometimes processes are not in place for them to share it.

So, here comes my final list. If Complexity were giving advice what would She say?

• do your homework – allow history and the context to inform what is needed and  how best it can implemented
• bring in learning from outside, but expect to customise it
• build relationships, see things longer term
• act bravely – tackle big issues
• see actions as experiments but don’t be too tentative and give up too easily
• connect things up, tackle ‘blockages’ work across scale
• keep doing your homework – keep looking at context (are things changing), at unexpected outcomes, at whether there are slow (or fast) signs of success, at what is working and what seems not to be working
• work with a broad stakeholder group – seek out differences of view, challenge yourself, keep immersing in the context
• look ahead, around, above, below – for signs of change, for potential tipping points – and allow this to shape future strategies and change methods and priorities
• expect  to be ‘wrong’
• ‘roll out’ by sharing learning not by dictat
• be very careful what you measure – what you measure is what you get