The Sidebar 2026
Last week, Fika joined changemakers, innovators, and systems thinkers from around the world in Oxford for the 2026 Skoll World Forum. We hosted four sessions and a social with The Sidebar and came away with full hearts and a lot to think about. Below, you’ll find video recordings from each session.
For a fuller picture of the week, check out Fika CEO Nivi Sharma’s reflections on LinkedIn.
Scaling Impact with AI and Digital Tools: From Data Gaps to Real-World Change
Digital tools and AI are rapidly reshaping what is possible in the social and environmental sectors, but many organizations are still figuring out how to apply them in ways that genuinely scale impact.
This Sidebar session, hosted by Fika and Earth Genome, explores how advances in AI and data are helping close critical information gaps and unlock more effective decision-making.
Systems that Last: Scaling with Government Co-Investment
Across Africa, many of the strongest solutions do not stall because they lack impact. They stall because sustainable scale is hard. The harder question is not whether a model works, but what it takes for the government to back it, budget for it, and carry it over time.
This Sidebar conversation brings together Fika, Food4Education, and Healthy Learners, alongside Zambia’s Permanent Secretary for Administration at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, for a practical discussion on that challenge.
Financing the First Mile: Unlocking Rural Access Investment for Community-Led Development
Rural access is the economic “first mile” underpinning health systems, education, markets, and climate resilience. Yet small-scale rural infrastructure remains fragmented, underfunded, and rarely structured for scale.
In this Sidebar session, Fika, Green Empowerment, and Musana will share concise evidence on returns and cost curves, then explore how to structure first-mile infrastructure using blended-finance approaches that combine grants, public budgets, concessional capital, tariffs, and community contributions.
From Mobility Poverty to Safe Access: Closing the First and Last Mile Gaps for Rural Communities
For millions of people in rural communities, the greatest barrier to opportunity is not always the absence of services, but the difficulty of reaching them safely, reliably, and affordably. This is the reality of mobility poverty: when distance, terrain, cost, and seasonal isolation cut people off from health care, education, markets, and livelihoods.
In this session, World Bicycle Relief and Fika will explore how practical rural mobility solutions, bicycles, and small-scale access infrastructure, such as trail bridges, can help close the first- and last-mile gap.
