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CSL4D Concept and systems learning:meaningful learning for development

About us

CSL4D (Concept & Systems Learning for Development) is an informal,

private initiative for studying the use of concept mapping and systemsthinking to enhance aid effectiveness by meaningful learning in agriculture,business, and education. It is the successor initiative to the HIPPOfoundation, which was created in 1997 to promote the availability ofaffordable high-efficiency irrigation pumps. The emphasis was on the low-

lift pumping conditions typical of small-scale irrigation along major Sahelian rivers, such asthe Niger in Mali, West Africa. The HIPPO foundation lives on asHippo PerspectivesatWordPressunder the domain namewww.hipponet.nl.

The HIPPO foundation had 3 main objectives, corresponding to the three originalHIPPOtheses:

Pumping costs in community-based irrigation schemes along the Niger River can bereduced from US$ 300 to less than US$ 150 per hectare per season; Irrigation pump marketing in West Africa is inefficient by international standards and canbe improved; The establishment of rental services of cost-efficient irrigation pumps is an effective wayof promoting self-help irrigation development by resource-poor farmers in the Sahel.

We believe that the first HIPPOthesis has been demonstrated. We refer to earlier documentssuch asEvaluation dune motopompe Kirloskar TV-1/NW9ME Kakondji, Tombouctou,Mali andFuel consumption report WMD-1/4HBC-35 (test 15/06/02). With prices higher thananywhere else in the world (except on the South Pole perhaps), the second HIPPOthesis has

never been in doubt.

The third objective, namely the establishment of pump rental services, was conceived with thefarmers perspective in mind. Its speedy realization would indeed have been ideal, but this

ideal proved difficult to achieve, not in the last place because national and internationaldevelopment organizations were unable or unwilling to follow up on privately avowed projectlogic due to idiosyncratic decision-making on their part, all to the detriment of aideffectiveness with regard to small-scale irrigation development in the South. In other words,development agencies were incapable of organizational learning in the face of generalagreement as to its necessity.

A second problem was that it is not very simple to establish a viable pump rental service in aremote area like Timbuktu. A learning trajectory in the form of action-research or multi-

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stakeholder learning was unavoidable. This is most likely what scared off most would-bedonors or development agencies, although none of them would admit so openly and frankly.This is all the more curious when one realizes that it is increasingly admitted in thedevelopment world that a systems learning approach to rural innovation of basic services suchas equipment rental is the only way to render development effective and self-sustaining.

At CSL4D we believe that the use of concept mapping and systems thinking can enhance aideffectiveness. Apart from the HIPPO story, our main inspiration comes from three books:Systems thinking, systems practice (Checkland, 1999), The fifth discipline (Senge, 2006), andmost of allLearning, creating, and using knowledge (Novak, 2010). The latter uses andexpands the meaningful learning theory of Ausubel. CSL4D aims to help translate the practicebased on these theories to development settings.For our mission statement, click here or onthe logo at the beginning of this post.

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