Dispatches from the frontline of network coordination: learning with Nono Sekhoto

In May 2024, Small Foundation invited our partner and collaborator Nono Sekhoto to share reflections from the arc of her career, including her work as a network leader. In her talk with the Small Foundation team, Nono highlighted the importance of passion, peer learning, participation and partnership.

Born in South Africa, Nono began her career in financial services before moving to a career in agriculture. As a commercial farmer, she focused her work on empowering youth in agriculture on national and global platforms. Since 2020, Nono has led the African Leadership Academy’s AL for Agribusiness Network. In 2022, together with the support of Converge, she coordinated a Network of Network Coordinators; and recently co-founded Circle Generation, a network advisory business building on the expertise of Converge.

Nono highlighted many contributing factors to her commitment to supporting networks:

• Passion: Nono loves numbers and finance, but her work with farmers, especially young farmers across the African continent, has shown her the value of finding more innovative ways to connect people to the finance, knowledge and opportunities needed to flourish. This has unlocked a career-defining passion for building effective and productive networks.
• Peer learning: the power of peer networks has permeated Nono’s experience. Not only can peers share authentic experiences from their own practical contexts, they can also help foster community for sustained, long-term connection, effective to combat feelings of isolation and mitigate stress.
• Partnership: leading and coordinating networks is long-term and often challenging work. Networks are fuelled by the self-interest and commitment of their members, but ultimately, they also need funds to put in place coordination and communication activities. Nono shared the value of funding partnerships that are able to provide unrestricted capital for networks to establish themselves and pursue their common purpose.
• Participation: as a network coordinator, Nono shared how she has seen different levels of engagement over time within networks; on occasion being concerned by this. Over time, she understood how participation in a network can ebb and flow, and that this can be a dynamic driver of the network’s evolution.

Nono presented the ‘participation spectrum’, introduced to her in the Network Leadership Series, which defines levels of engagement at different points. At any given time, network coordinators can expect around 20% of members to be leading the network. This group can change over time as participants step in and out of circles of participation.

Nono also emphasised that supporting networks to achieve systems change involves taking an experimental approach. In her case, this has meant engaging with network members and peer coordinators in different ways to unlock opportunities to learn, share and support new initiatives.

We are grateful to Nono for sharing her insights and experiences with Small Foundation, and look forward to continuing learning from and with her as she continues on her network leadership path.