New Hope for a new country

I wrote this article while in South Africa. This is sample of my first steps on Design Thinking. Joseph: New hope for a new country As a member of an International Organization, part of the United Nations, I am still trying to figure out “who” is my user. Taking on consideration that all our work is centered on providing support to governments to achieve national and global goals on a “by demand” approach. Clearly our user will be government officials, whom we try to support with capacity enhancement programmes and advisory services for new policies formulations. But, after DTBC my concept has started to change, and personally I think that our efforts (especially mine) should move beyond this concept and start thinking on the final users, who are the actual citizens of any country. Design thinking is helping me to understand this much better and to be able to focus my attention to the users that really needs our help and support.

Let me introduce my user. Joseph. He is a 34 years old man who was born in Limpopo Province (Limpopo is one of the poorest provinces in South Africa) and migrate to Gauteng (one of the wealthiest provinces) in 1997, three years after the end of Apartheid. He is married and has two kids (6 and 2) and lives in a township close to Pretoria, 30Kms away from his workplace (in South Africa the lack of public transportation makes it very difficult and expensive to move around, especially when you are in a budget). Since 1994 South Africa has been working towards reducing inequalities and social imbalances in the country. 18 years after the new government took the leadership of a unified country, huge divisions of wealth and imbalances are easily identified in all segments of society. Joseph’s dreams when he was young coming to the capital of the country are gradually fading. The country is not offering young people opportunities to growth and to improve the quality of life. Every year new universities/colleges graduates are ending working at the hospitality industry, hence reducing their hopes and dreams of a new life. So, the issue is how all the international agencies, corporates, and civil society organizations that work in developing countries in Africa could contribute to a change and make an impact on lives of the these young dreamers.