An estimated 250 million children in low and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their full developmental potential. Given Early Childhood Development (ECD) is one of Pharo Foundation's flagship programmes this is an important topic to us and we were keen to bring in Saving Brains experts to discuss this further.

Saving Brains invests in bold, evidence-based innovations that nurture healthy brain development and strengthen caregiving in the earliest, most critical years of life—from pregnancy to age five. To discuss this and what we can learn from their work, today we are talking with Sanjana Janardhanan, Portfolio Manager, Saving Brains at Grand Challenges Canada and Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar, Chief Scientist at Community Empowerment Lab.

This episode explores how we can optimise and increase access to healthcare through innovation, in contexts which are resource poor, such as Africa.

To discuss this, we have brought on Niek Vesteegde, a tropical doctor turned entrepreneur, and Founder and CEO of Goal 3 - a social enterprise dedicated to transforming paediatric and neonatal healthcare through scalable, sustainable and data-driven solutions that are fit for context. With him, we have Alef Meulenberg, who is the co-founder of Rhiza Babuyile and Rhiza Holdings which implement an innovative sustainable developmental model in disadvantaged African communities.

As Pharo Foundation's missions progress and we look to scale up our cost effective and evidence-based interventions, it's clear to us that utilising a range of innovative financing instruments to scale up our missions is critical. Among these instruments, outcomes-based financing is gaining traction and proving very effective. At its core, this method relies on a pre-agreed set of outcomes being achieved in order to trigger payments.

To explore how this method works, and its benefits, we have spoken with Adriana Balducci, Head of Programme Development at the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), and Chloe Edleston, Regional Lead for East Africa at Social Finance.

In a previous episode we spoke with Oxfam about how far we should go in introducing innovations that challenge local culture. In this episode, we focus on how this translates to the education that we provide to our youth. We explore how we can leverage local culture to shape our youth into unique critical thinkers.

To address this question, we are focusing on Somaliland and our guests are two respected members of the local community: Muna Ahmed Jama, Pharo Foundation's Head of Education In Somaliland, and Dr. Jama Musse Jama, the founder and organiser of the Hargeisa International Book Fair and Director of the Hargeisa Cultural Centre.

This episode focuses on one of the most important questionsin philanthropy: how do philanthropic organisations go about ascertaining that they are indeed doing all the good they set out to do in the first place? While most development philanthropists are well-intentioned, whether these goodintentions end up improving development outcomes is not a foregone conclusion. So, to help us look at how to carry out effective impact assessment and all this can mean, we have three experts joining us in this episode: Fabio Bezerra, Director of Design, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning at ForAfrika, Lina Henao, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Director at iDE Mozambique and Ken Lee, Chief Research and Evaluation Officer at Pharo Foundation.

In this unique episode we are joined by Kidus Asfaw, Founderand CEO of Kubik - an Africa-based start-up transforming plastic waste into low-carbon construction materials that are cheaper and faster to build with than cement. Joining Kidus is our youngest guest to date, Helen Tekalign. A prodigious young student and already the winner of many local STEMcompetitions, Helen is in 8th grade at Pharo School Assosa located in a rural area of the BGRS state on the western edge of Ethiopia. The two discuss their entry into the field of STEM, and Kidus shares his journey from young tinkerer to CEO of his own successful start-up, and how he hopes to see Helen and other Ethiopian students like her do the same.

This episode focuses on innovation in the most basic sense: the introduction of something new into an existing cultural context. Oxfam's Raissa Azzalini and Zakarie Abdi discuss sustainable, culturally appropriate, and environment-friendly Water, Sanitation and Hygiene solutions in fragile contexts.

This episode examines whether there are any lessons for Africa to learn from the development experience of East Asia. We want to look at what factors led relatively poor East Asian countries to develop so quickly and even saw them become technological innovators in the space of just a few decades.

To make comparisons between these two continents and see how East Asia’s history can apply in Africa, we have brought on an expert in Development Studies and one of Pharo’s own leaders in innovation in East Africa. These are: James Putzel, Professor of Development Studies in the International Development Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Bethel Tsegaye, CEO of Pharo Ventures and Country Director of Pharo Foundation Ethiopia.

There is a cliché that the diaspora’s migration crowds out opportunities for home grown talent and national innovation through the so-called ‘brain drain’. However, there are many initiatives that defy this cliché and in this episode, we explore the many modalities through which the diaspora can make a positive difference both at an individual level and on a national scale, leading to increased innovation. To help us look at this we have brought on three expert guests who have each experienced the catalytic power of the diaspora. These are: Loksan Harley, Independent Migration and Diaspora Specialist and Executive Director at Homelands Advisory, Dominic Mwenja, CEO and Program Director at Miramar International Foundation and Funsho Allu, Board Member at Pharo Foundation and Founding Partner of TIA Capital.

In this episode we explore the various existing models of philanthropy and whether those working in this sector can/should innovate in the way they do philanthropy. We cover a variety of models from direct delivery to effective altruism through flexible funding, and we reflect on their implications for measuring impact. Our expert guests are David Nash, Community Director at Effective Altruism UK, and Dr Steph Hayden a researcher from the University of Kent.