The Challenge

As São Tomé and Príncipe celebrates its 50th year of independence, the island nation stands at a crossroads. This milestone offers a profound opportunity to reflect on the country’s triumphs and chart an ambitious course for the next half-century. 

Yet the moment carries urgency. Nearly 1 in 5 Santomeans now live abroad, and 68% of young people are considering leaving to seek opportunities elsewhere. Economic challenges persist—a third of the working-age population remains economically inactive, and nearly half the country lives on less than $3.65 a day.

When UNDP undertook deep listening with citizens across São Tomé, what emerged wasn’t just concern about jobs or income. Beneath these visible challenges lay something more fundamental: the need to strengthen the social fabric that could inspire citizens to stay and build a thriving future together.

Traditional development approaches—often siloed, isolated programmes, duplicated resources—aren’t just inefficient. They’re fundamentally mismatched to the complexity of the challenge. 

Services: Systems Change, Innovation, Training, Facilitation, Program Design

Sectors: Gender, Climate Change

2024- Ongoing

Our Approach

UNDP’s Digital, AI and Innovation Hub (DAI) brought me in to co-design and facilitate their first systems change portfolio approach in São Tomé and Príncipe—a pioneering methodology that addresses complex challenges through coordinated, multi-intervention strategies rather than isolated projects. The portfolio seeks to catalyse a transformative change in the way São Toméans view their futures and the future of their country—as deeply interconnected and paving the way for a development agenda that is green, innovative, abundant, inclusive, participatory and just.

Drawing on over a decade of experience facilitating systems change processes globally, I spent two intensive weeks with UNDP and over 70 stakeholders from across government, civil society, and international organizations in São Tomé and Principe in April 2025. This wasn’t a standard workshop series—it was an immersive capacity-building and co-design process that fundamentally shifted how participants understand their work and their country’s challenges. This was the key moment in a two year collaboration that is ongoing.

The work creates impact through three integrated approaches:

Systems Change Facilitation: We guide diverse actors—ministries of Labour, Finance, Education, Environment, Health, Justice; NGOs; social entrepreneurs; UN agencies—through rigorous systems mapping exercises. We don’t just chart symptoms; we excavate root causes, unpacking the invisible mental models keeping the system stuck.

Portfolio Co-Design: Rather than predetermined solutions, we facilitate the emergence of five strategic focus areas that together form an integrated portfolio: National Identity & Vision for the Future; Green Transition; Abundant Futures; A Life Free of Violence; The First 1000 Days. Each area builds on existing work while creating intentional connections across sectors.

Capacity Building: We train participants in systems thinking methodologies and deep listening techniques, including the design and implementation of a training programme for staff in the government’s new Integrated Service Units. The curriculum—”Connecting the Dots: Systemic Thinking and Deep Listening for Integrated Service Delivery”—equips frontline workers to hear what citizens really need, map interconnections across services, and share learning across agencies.

The Impact

The portfolio now guides coordinated action across five strategic areas, with four new interventions being co-designed and launched:

• An integrated approach to combat youth emigration combining short-term certified training, job placement, green entrepreneurship, and psychosocial support.
• Innovative Community-driven waste management and recycling systems
• A children’s orchestra using musical education as a tool for social inclusion, cultural appreciation, and empowerment,
• A new approach to using sport to cultivate a sense of belonging

The deeper shift: Over 70 government officials, UN staff, and civil society leaders now work from a shared systems map—seeing their efforts as interconnected, not isolated. As one Tax Office member reflects: “Now when I suggest a law change, I consider the impact on young entrepreneurs, on women entering the market, on creating pathways for excluded groups.”

“Portfolios are a dynamic development mechanism that help governments generate a constant supply of intelligence about complex challenges so that they can manage transitions, leverage linkages across multiple initiatives, drive significant efficiencies, generate new possibilities and mobilize multiasset, long-term financing for actions. It also allows development partners to harness that intelligence to pursue their own (national) policy needs – from trade and investment opportunities to better understanding migration drivers, demographic challenges and adoption of new technologies.”