Minutes · 25 September

1. Vision and mission (agreed)

25 September

2. Agreed keywords and our stance

25 September

• Strengthening · research and innovation · evidence-based insights · communities, businesses and institutions together · uphold the values.
• We would like to be stewards: the living evidence.
• Research must be based on facts, not from nowhere: science-based, working from something already established.
• This is not academic work and not another school; we are running change, not research for its own sake.

3. Core values we carry

25 September

• From the ten SALT values, the priorities that surfaced: stewardship (the most emphasized), transformation, compassion, integrity, leadership, accountability, trust, community wellbeing and justice.
• We focus on the value.

4. The three theories that ground our research

25 September

• Moral legitimacy (intrinsic): is an organisation judged by whether its conduct truly reflects the values it professes? Are the values embedded, or only displayed?
• Pragmatic (extrinsic): is the theory implemented in how the organisation actually carries out its work? Do practice and promise align?
• Stakeholder (people-centred): stewardship, justice and all the values, for everyone affected.
• We research how to bring these to organisations in a way CEOs and founders understand and can use.
• These theories become embedded in the organisation, which is what helps us produce solutions.

5. Research scope and focus

25 September

• The scope stays within values, ethics and the African context; grants are written around leadership values, not everywhere.
• Take TWG 2 to a self-sustaining research and innovation entity. That is the main job.
• Focus areas: AI ethics, the African context, and community wellbeing.
• Reach people without Wi-Fi through channels such as USSD.
• Community wellbeing: stop the pattern of places that generate revenue while surrounding communities stay in poverty; ensure every place has community wellbeing.
• Research for advocacy and policy change is a legitimate funding avenue, and you never know where money can come from.
• Research can blend with policy change: if a policy issue is being transformed, the network may commission research on it.

6. AI: how we use it, and where we draw the line

25 September

• AI is fast, but it can hallucinate and tell us what we want to hear; it must not be an AI-generated answer with no human intervention.
• When AI gives a result, ask it for citations of where the information came from, then go visit those places and check the information yourself.
• AI aggregates and summarises; it is not the only path. Books on value-driven work and search engines that outline sources allow direct research.
• AI can limit fast thinking; for example, a no-code site builder can make a website quickly but not a real backend well.
• AI has positive and negative effects on the environment, on society and on governance; keep asking whether each use is positive or negative and whether to move ahead.
• The rule: AI proposes, we ask for citations, a person verifies at the source. Unchecked claims do not count.

7. Funding and resource mobilization

25 September

• Apply for research grants only when we have solid, specific, evidenced research.
• Grant streams: training grants, innovation project grants and community wellbeing grants.
• Write a number of grants; commission TWG 1 to deliver the training and mobilize the money into the network.
• Mobilize money through innovation projects, working with ideas and visuals to demonstrate value activities in companies in the African context.
• Identify the challenges governments face and mobilize resources around them.
• Money is sensitive: frame the ask around research value and outcomes, and be clear on why the money is needed.
• We do not chase grants by topic (climate, health); evaluate each grant by fit with the mission.
• Leverage facilities and shared space already available.
• Partner with NGOs that help with research, and collaborate over direct cash.
• Example discussed: a local innovation linked with an NGO, in the style of an innovation from Strathmore partnered with MK Africa Limited.
• Aim for research that can stand on its own.
• Open question: will the school support when a solution is found but resources are limited?

8. What we deliver

25 September

The four best items, plus the follow-on

• Research grants: solid, evidenced research that wins funding.
• Research and innovation projects for companies that need solutions, finding people with various gifts.
• Workshops and innovation events: show how to embed the ten values into corporations, and be very big in this.
• Impact events: give people knowledge, and build useful things such as apps and websites.

• Consider an art workshop or art gala on campus, with the best work drawn up and sold at events.
• A potential conference: thematic, on leadership and ethics in Africa, possibly several, including ethics in AI use.
• Impact assessment and post-impact assessment, measuring the network's intervention and capacity building.
• Network-focused research: network surveys, partner surveys and member surveys; the team drives the network's data activities and are custodians of the data.
• Thought leadership tied to events, around Africa leadership and ethics, or ethics and business leadership in Africa, drawing on top leaders who have excelled.
• Review previous research on small businesses and SMEs, and look at where other researchers failed and solutions did not come out well.
• The marketplace idea will also bring change.

9. Training and capacity development

25 September

• Training and capacity covers both network members and targeted external audiences.
• Someone may ask the network to come and train; the role is to cost it, plan it and deliver it.
• Drive the agenda around values into work: people want to know VESG, train on it, and raise awareness of value-based leadership among members.
• Work with Strathmore University to mount value-based leadership training for a community, which could be paid.
• Build initiatives: ensure training for network members, training for targeted companies, and anything else useful; it is as broad as needed and stays dynamic, never cast in stone.
• The membership keeps growing, so there will be induction for new groups.

10. How we run, and who leads

25 September

• This is a voluntary network and a community of practice; volunteering time must stay light and not become a job, so terms of reference must not tie professionals down.
• The network does not take people off their work; it will not take even an eighth of your time.
• Nominate a group leader and vice leader, plus a secretary and treasurer.
• Leadership is gender-balanced; the group embraces both women and men, and a top leader is still to be named.
• Each thematic working group proposes its own leader and holds independent meetings with a secretary to facilitate, kept low-cost in energy and time.
• Propose top-notch leaders to come and speak to inspire the network.
• Thematic working groups: group 1 for training and capacity, group 2 for research and innovation (room B01), and the fundraising group remains.
• Up to six thematic working groups were constituted; some were collapsed and the operational ones moved into the secretariat, driven by Strathmore University and the partner in Kenya, leaving only the action groups.
• Question raised about a marketing network and where it went; that is a domain to note.
• The fundraising group has trips and trainings to deliver, including leadership training and value investigations never done before.