Stop Replicating. Start Listening.
By Joanna M. Papada
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"You never asked."
This exchange happened in Zambia in the 1970s, when an Italian development team arrived to teach local farmers how to grow food. They brought Italian seeds, planted magnificent tomatoes in the fertile Zambezi valley, and marveled at how the crops flourished in African soil.
Then, overnight, 200 hippos emerged from the river and ate everything.
When the bewildered Italians asked the locals about the hippos, they learned the locals had never farmed that valley for exactly this reason. The Italians never thought to ask why.
We're still making the same mistake.
For decades, the social sector has operated on a replication model: a successful program, usually led by an inspiring charismatic leader, touts its success to a wider audience. Believing and convincing others that their expertise can be planted in any fertile soil. And the only metric would be feel-good stories about growing magnificent tomatoes.
The Federal Government, along with private philanthropists, spent billions on the No Child Left Behind Education Reform Act from 2002 to 2015. Along with measuring Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), public school districts were required to purchase replicated programs, such as America’s Choice, Reading First, and Success for All. The performance metric- All students will reach proficiency by 2014.
The federal government even spent $500 million over 15 years on one non-profit replication initiative and still has no evidence or accounting that it delivered its stated deliverables.
Here's what I have learned: What succeeds in one place rarely transplants to another, at least without understanding the local context first. The "successful model" often depends on unique conditions, human resources, and circumstances that don't exist elsewhere.
What works instead?
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Before bringing any solution, start with a conversation.
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Know the assets that exist.
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Focus on human capital development.
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Learn what has been tried before, and the specific outcomes, and
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Understand the barriers that residents see as an outsider, you might miss.
This isn't about abandoning expertise or proven practices. It's about recognizing that communities hold knowledge outsiders don't have. They know where the hippos are.
Real transformation happens when we:
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Listen before prescribing and understand the context before importing solutions.
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Support local ownership; Investing in what communities want to build, not what we want to replicate.
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Build sustainable infrastructure; Creating systems that survive beyond any single leader or grant cycle.
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Share practices, not mandates, offering tools and lessons while respecting local adaptation
The question isn't who brings the best program to the table. It's whether we're willing to sit at the table and ask what communities need before we decide what they should have.
The choice is simple: Do we want to transform communities, or do we want to replicate our programs?
Because the evidence suggests we can't do both.
Joanna M. Papada is MBC’s Vice President of External and Government Relations.