Scaling Is A Team Sport: How Judith Neilson Foundation, Million Lives Collective and IDIA Are Changing Urban Innovation

Participants at the 2025 IDIA Global Summit in Nairobi gather around the IDIA letters, representing a growing global community committed to scaling innovation that works.

African cities are adding millions of residents within a few years, yet many "successful" innovations still reach only thousands of people. Traditional projects train 20,000 young people, then ask for more money to reach 100,000, while the real need sits at five million. The Judith Neilson Foundation, Million Lives Collective and IDIA have decided to change that pattern by making collaboration and scaling the centre of their work, not a side activity.

Judith Neilson Foundation's Bet On Cities

The Judith Neilson Foundation focuses on people and communities that are just, resilient and able to thrive. At the IDIA Global Summit in Nairobi on 3 December 2025, the foundation confirmed a new step in that mission. Together with Million Lives Collective, it launched the African Cities Innovation Fund, offering flexible grants of up to 75,000 US dollars for African urban innovations that are ready to scale.

This is not a standard grant window.

• It backs collaborative teams, not solo organisations.

• It funds proven solutions with clear reach, cost and outcome data.

• It requires a credible long term answer on who will own and finance the work in ten to fifteen years.

The foundation is not interested in one more short term project. It is investing in models that cities can eventually run and pay for themselves.

Million Lives Collective Brings The Pipeline

Million Lives Collective has spent years identifying innovators who already reach large numbers of people with concrete results. Its community includes social enterprises, public agencies and civil society groups that can prove impact, not just tell stories.

By partnering with the Judith Neilson Foundation, Million Lives Collective can now offer its members three things.

• A clear pathway from "promising solution" to "city wide service."

• Support on designing partnerships and scaling strategies.

• Visibility with funders and governments that are serious about impact at scale.

Earlier collaboration grants, including programmes focused on women's economic empowerment, showed that when innovators work with trusted local institutions, they improve logistics, reinforce behaviour change and maintain quality while expanding across diverse African contexts.

IDIA Provides The Collaboration Spine

IDIA connects this partnership to a wider ecosystem of funders, practitioners and governments. It contributes three core elements.

• Global convening. Through the Nairobi summit, training programmes and collaboration labs, IDIA creates the rooms where ideas, deals and partnerships are shaped.

• Context translation. The Global Innovation Adviser Network links local experts to global funders so that innovations fit political, cultural and market realities instead of fighting them.

• Digital infrastructure. The Pulse platform will host funding calls, learning journeys and an opportunities dashboard for grants, jobs and training, making it easier for the community to collaborate between events.

IDIA also works with a peer network of innovation leads from donor agencies who are reviewing how they support innovation ecosystems, scaling practice and digital public infrastructure. This helps ensure that thinking behind the African Cities Innovation Fund influences wider donor behaviour.

From Global Networks To Country Systems

Scaling only becomes real when it lands in country systems. Kenya offers one live example. Around eleven funders have formed a Kenya innovation ecosystem grant makers forum and aligned their portfolios with the national innovation master plan. That forum has now begun a collaboration with IDIA.

Three values guide this work.

• Co creation of programmes with Kenyan partners.

• Contextualisation of global tools rather than copy and paste.

• Sustainability so efforts continue after external funding ends.

For Judith Neilson Foundation and Million Lives Collective, these are exactly the conditions that make long term scaling possible.

Why Solo Funding Falls Short

The shift led by these three actors responds to realities many practitioners know well.

• Shrinking aid budgets limit room for endless pilots.

• Complex urban issues demand capabilities no single organisation holds.

• Innovations that sit outside public systems rarely reach the millions who need them.

Scaling cannot mean "do the same thing, only bigger." It must mean changing who delivers, who pays and how the wider system behaves. That is why the African Cities Innovation Fund demands existing evidence and future ownership plans, and why IDIA invests in peer learning among funders as well as support for innovators.

What Practitioners Can Do Next

Practitioners who want to be ready when the African Cities Innovation Fund opens can start within twenty four hours.

• Map your collaboration gaps. List at least three organisations you need as partners: a public body, a community actor and a complementary technical or commercial player.

• Gather proof of impact. Pull together data on people reached, cost per person and outcomes over time. Fill any obvious gaps.

• Test joint delivery now. Run a small pilot with one partner before the call opens and document what works and what fails.

• Write down your sustainability story. In one short paragraph, answer who will fund and who will implement in ten to fifteen years and what needs to change between now and then.

• Plug into learning spaces. Join IDIA alumni networks, national funder forums and adviser communities where scaling, not just innovation, is on the agenda.

Key Moves To Steal From This Partnership

• Treat 75,000 dollar grants as leverage to unlock city budgets or commercial revenue.

• Only submit proposals that are truly collaboration ready, with clear partner roles and power sharing.

• Budget for context translators who can bridge language, politics and practice.

• Track system signals such as new budget lines, policy changes and institutional partnerships, not only training counts.

• Align with country platforms so your work fits national strategies and avoids duplication.

• Share learning openly so others can build on your success rather than repeat early mistakes.

When funders and practitioners adopt these principles, it becomes accurate to say that Judith Neilson Foundation, Million Lives Collective and IDIA have made scaling their shared business. Collaboration becomes the entry requirement, not an optional extra, and the path from bright idea to city wide impact becomes shorter and more achievable.