Overview
From LLiSA
Living Labs in Southern Africa (LLiSA) is a project for establishing a community and network of Living Lab practitioners in the Southern African region, aiming at advancing and supporting open user-centric innovation and Living Labs in South Africa. The network support and coordination project is initiated by three parties: COFISA, SAFIPA and Meraka Institute.
The COFISA programme has as part of its operations actively promoted Living Lab-approaches for creating sustainable, user-centric innovation environments in South Africa, both in rural and urban environments. Living Labs in essence, are systemic initiatives, which focus on creating multistakeholder collaboration in different stages of the research, development and innovation (RDI) processes. In Living Labs, users or citizens are seen as a source of new innovations, as co-creators of new services and products, typically linked to creation or application of ICTs or ICT-enabled services. Living Labs are platforms for exploring these opportunities in various areas; for instance in e-commerce, healthcare, transport, tourism development, energy production etc.
The thinking and practice behind Living Labs has been developed over the last years especially in the EU, where the promotion and implementation of the approach has resulted in the creation of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL ), which in 2008 has expanded also beyond European borders. Its mission is to help create first class innovation environments for ICT-based products, services and social innovations and facilitate innovation and collaboration between users, industry and research stakeholders. While the community is still young, and some of the pilots have a low degree of maturity, the approach is in many cases proving to be successful and is being adopted more widely by different actors, public and private. The network and pilot projects have also received strong political support, ranging from cities or local governments to the European Commission. This has in a way been a collective effort to include users in a systematic way in a European innovation system.
In South Africa, citizens have so far not been seen as playing a particularly active or important role in the innovation system. Often, they are seen as passive and adaptive, merely utilising technology developed elsewhere or prescribed to them by experts external to their situations. On the other hand, the challenge of developing sustainable solutions that involve the disadvantaged sections of the population highlights the need to understand these user groups thoroughly. User-centric approaches could thus provide real value for developing and validating new concepts, services or products, allowing more rapid insights into how different users think, adopt, use and influence technology. As a systemic and approach, this could lead to empowering users to become active partners in RDI processes for the future. It could also greatly benefit the current ICT4D community and help in creating more sustainable outcomes in the area of utilising technology in social and economic development.
South Africa is a particularly complex and diversified society, and correspondingly the market environment is very heterogeneous, incorporating groups of citizens and organisations that can be regarded as typical for both developing and developed countries. The diverse situation can be regarded as a core strength and opportunity for Living Lab activities, providing a rich array of contexts and groups of users to experiment and innovate with.
Currently, South Africa already has organizations such as Meraka and SAP that have been active in the European Living Lab network through a European 6th Framework Living Lab project, Collaboration@Rural: a Collaborative Platform for Working and Living in Rural Areas.(C@R). Living Lab models have been explored in Sekhukhune by the aforementioned organizations, the Limpopo Provincial Government and in Dwesa in the Eastern Cape by the universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare through their rural ICT projects in collaboration with COFISA, Nokia Siemens Networks and other partners. Various other Living Lab activities are in start-up phases (Moutse/Nldovu LL, Soshanguve LL, CPUT etc.) with a number of interested parties emerging. The themes and concepts are therefore not entirely new in South Africa. The maturity of these activities has to some extent been officially recognized by the newly granted membership in ENoLL for three regional inititiatives in Southern Africa: Sekukhune, Siyakhula and Maputo Living Labs. The existing Living Labs have targeted rural development as a specific focus, but in the future, urban projects are seemingly willing and interested to join in, as demonstrated by the work that the CPUT is carrying out in Cape Town.
In any case, many of the activities currently carried out under the banner of Living Labs are young and still in early stages and it will take some time until a clearer picture of the results and benefits of such approaches are. The projects seem to be dependent on a single partner (often a university or a research institution) and are often lacking in terms of real partnerships for local or regional development, usually manifested through private and public support and participation in the projects. This is a major area for development where LLiSA could possibly play a role in attracting additional participation and partnerships. It would also provide means to collectively monitor progress, identify value add and showcase successes of the individual Living Labs.
