Regional Assemblies

The institutions to secure a better future for all don’t exist. Let’s invent them together. 

We’re in a period of great potential. There is a desire for transformation towards a safe future. There is more knowledge of the solutions and technology that can help us get there. But for a secure future, we need transformations to happen faster, and at a greater scale. 

What if every continent had a diverse group of people who shared a purpose of acting for the transformation from climate emergency to prosperity? What if that group engaged citizens and academics to describe pathways to prosperous futures – pathways which others could align with? What if the members supported each other to make brave decisions, and form collaborations on important matters? 

 

The purpose of the Regional Assemblies is to catalyse an unprecedented period of experimentation that move the continent the world from emergency to prosperity. We want to create a community of leaders who support each other in acting bolding for a better future. 

 

We believe there are people in decision-making positions across many sectors who are frustrated with the slow pace of change and are looking for a channel to act more urgently. The Assemblies, and the networks, pathways and other spin-offs they will create, provide that channel. 

 

We are developing our first Assembly in Africa.

ouR Purpose 

  • Our purpose is to build humanity’s capacity for transformation. If we can inspire many people, networks, and organizations to start experimenting with transformation, we may be able to move beyond the way things are and build a better future.  

    • Create a network of senior leaders who support each other in acting for transformation.  

    • Identify areas where there is high potential for transformation, and collectively design deep dives into these areas to see what capacities we can built. Build teams who can work on these interventions 

    • Build a growing network of mainstream institutions who have a shared purpose of catalyzing transformation  

 

Approach 

We are currently co-designing the approach with the first wave of Africa Assembly members. The core concept: 

  • A diverse group of Assembly Members with a shared purpose. 

  • Coming together to share knowledge and experience, then choosing which themes to dive into 

  • Assembly Meetings making sense of the work so far, creating the next version of plausible pathways and identify the next round of priorities. 

  • In-depth Inquiries that pursue those priorities with citizens and experts, to come back with new evidence for the next Assembly. These Inquiries will be able to use the Inspirations search function [LINK] and the  

  • Common design principles, so each Inquiry can discover its own path, while ensuring the ethos of engaging people and rigour is maintained. 

  • A Membership which diverse, and open to those who want to act on the shared purpose. 

  • A secretariat based in Strathmore University, in Nairobi. 

 

The year ahead 

Through 2020 we are hoping to do the following: 

  • March: Planning meeting to set the parameters. 

  • June: First full meeting, with some 20 Members. Prioritise the inquiries for the coming year. 

  • October. Interim findings, in time to contribute to this year’s climate negotiations at COP26 in the UK in November. 

  • Throughout: grow the partners involved from across Africa, bring in the resources we need, develop methods to describe plausible pathways, learn lessons for the next Regional Assembly. 

 

How you can get involved 

You may have many different sorts of contributions: 

  • As an organisation that wants to be part of the Assembly. 

  • An issue you think the Assembly to prioritise. 

  • A criticism or concern that we have to address. 

  • Someone who wants to be in the citizen engagement. 

  • A suggestion on a fantastic initiative or institutions in Africa that we should know about – go to Inspirations submission

 

If so drop us a line on: AfricaAssembly_TT@ucl.ac.uk