Leadership Exchanges bring together top political leaders from different countries to engage around a common predicament and explore promising interventions. Recognizing that any truly impactful solution to today’s big challenges requires a multi-sector response, countries that participate bring a delegation of at least three ministers or equivalently senior leaders who will be instrumental to shaping and delivering a transformational response for their nation.
Leadership Exchanges are convened in a country that has made notable progress in a particular area. They are hosted by the leaders that led the strategy to address the issue. Visiting participants are brought along the journey of how the host country assessed their situation, ultimately designed and implemented their response, what they learned in the process, and how they have continued to modify their approach. Participants are given deeper insights through site visits, access to tracking data and program management tools.
During the Leadership Exchange, the host country openly shares the challenges it encountered during implementation in the hope that these pitfalls can be avoided by others. All participants brainstorm together on how to address anticipated challenges to the implementation of similar initiatives. The ultimate goal is for each participating country delegation to leave with a roadmap for action that is appropriate to their own context, and that all the participants form a “community of practice,” continuing to share with each other new innovations and learnings.
To date, Leadership Exchanges have been facilitated:
- To Israel, to understand how that country reconciled water scarcity with food and nutrition security
- To Brazil, to understand its approach to Early Childhood Development
- To Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia, to understand its approach to job creation through transformation of the agricultural value chain
- To Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to understand the city’s approach to Early Childhood Development
- To Rwanda, to understand its approach to preparing youth to thrive in the contemporary economy, particularly through making entrepreneurism and technology central to the school curriculum
