Flow in Addis: trading technical jargon for true impact in Africa

There’s a specific kind of magic to Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa. It’s not just the altitude that takes your breath away, or the intoxicating aroma of roasting coffee beans that seems ubiquitous. It’s the energy of a city that is styling itself as the diplomatic heartbeat of Africa.

Recently, a team of six Flowstars touched down in the vibrant capital of Ethiopia with a unique mission: to help some of the continent’s most brilliant development experts communicate their impact.

We were in Addis to facilitate a two-day “Communicating Results” training workshop as part of the GIZ African Union Annual Planning Conference 2026. In the room were nearly 200 development professionals who deal in complex policies, intricate socio-economic frameworks and multilayered stakeholder engagements.

But here’s the universal truth about brilliant, highly technical minds: jargon can be a common tripping hazard in communications.

When you spend your life immersed in acronyms and technical outputs, it can be difficult to explain what you do to someone outside your bubble. And in the world of development, if policymakers, partners and the public can’t understand your work, your impact can be limited.

We didn’t want to stand at the front of the marquee, set up on the grounds of the International Livestock Research Institute in Addis, and lecture these experts on communications theory. We wanted them to get stuck in. 

Our core philosophy for the two days was simple: practice over theory. We kicked things off with break-out sessions in which delegates were challenged to come up with their best and worst “elevator pitches”. 

What’s an elevator pitch? Well, imagine you had only the duration of an elevator ride to explain your work to a complete stranger. What would you start with? How would you make it memorable? 

It’s an exercise that challenges participants to distil their complex work into a few short sentences or stories, designed to pique the stranger’s curiosity. No jargon. No long background. Just the most interesting facts. 

The shift we were asking them to make was profound, yet deceptively simple. We needed them to stop talking about their outputs (how many workshops held, how many reports compiled) and start talking about their impact (the lives changed, the systems improved).

To break up the intensive group work, we delivered a series of short, punchy, TED-style talks on modern communication trends. We explored how to leverage AI without losing our humanity, how to command a professional presence on LinkedIn, and how to capture compelling visual stories using nothing but a mobile phone.

But the undisputed highlight of the conference was the culmination of delegates’ hard work: a Dragons’ Den-style pitch session.

After two days of drafting, testing and refining their elevator pitches with their peers, selected participants took to the stage to present their work to the full cohort. The transformation was electric. People who had initially hidden behind technical descriptors were now delivering crisp, one-minute narratives about why their work matters.

It’s easy to dismiss communication as a soft skill in the face of hard, systemic development challenges. But what we saw in Addis reaffirmed what we at Flow have always known: good communication is the bridge between a great idea and actual change.

If you cannot explain your work simply, you cannot advocate for it effectively.

Leaving Addis, fuelled by excellent coffee, injera and the warmth of Ethiopian hospitality, our Flow team felt immensely privileged. We didn’t give the GIZ AU team the answers; they already had them. 

We just helped them clear away the jargon so the rest of the world could finally hear their stories of change.