We are entrepreneurs and we know that entrepreneurship has the ability to improve standards of living and create wealth, for the entrepreneurs and their employees. And, they have positive spillovers into ecosystems and hence the larger economy. While established businesses are oftentimes confined by legacy organisational structures, startup entrepreneurs have the agility to leverage innovations more quickly for economics and social good.

We facilitate and provide services that focus on the major bottlenecks that entrepreneurs face: Access to skills, access to finance and access to markets, all while embracing an ecosystem rather than narrow industry approach.

We provide coaching support to entrepreneurs across all development stages, advise on product development as well as business model aspects, design investment schemes and foster ecosystem aggregators such as innovation hubs, incubators, academia and export agencies.

We are former advisors in the higher education space and teaching assistants and lecturers at global business schools. We are seeing that primary and secondary education is improving globally and that the focus therefore shifts on tertiary education, as high skilled labor is increasingly relevant for countries to sustain and improve their competitiveness. This has also been recognised by the Sustainable Development Goals.

We understand that higher education and academic institutions have unique organisational structures. Respecting the self-governing principles, independence and freedom of academic institutions, we provide organisational development services rooted in our experience in working with Africana and global universities.

We assess the suitability of regulatory frameworks of higher education institutions, we deliver higher education management and administration support (on the level of the academic senate down to the level of departments), design systems for university-industry collaboration.

We know that agriculture is the backbone of any economy and that its sustainable development is key to achieving food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth, especially in developing countries.

We look at digital technologies and agro-tech for innovations that can accompany the rapid transformation of agri-food systems, which is currently driven by urbanisation and globalisation.

We have hands-on experience with all project cycle phases and experience in data collection, research and analysis. We offer advisory services in agriculture and agribusiness development, rural employment and food systems.

Today an organization’s survival and growth is directly linked to its ability to conduct foresight, adapt and embrace change and leverage it for renewal. Organisations need to be nimble to respond and thrive in a fastly evolving business landscape, and uncertainties of the future.

We conduct Scenario Planning for you, create Strategic Foresight capacity and engage with the core of your organisation to understand its business, identify and remove environmental threats, efficiency blockers, change resistors and profitability barriers. We work with you to deliver a strategic and long-term transformation that is aligned with your business ambitions.

Together with our partners, we conduct training in the area of strategic foresight and scenario planning, examine the implications for your strategic orientation, and assist in the development of strategies as well as their implementation. For the latter, we analyse and help you optimise organisational processes.

We understand that ‘Knowing what works’ is the future of development effectiveness. Sound M&E systems help to track and monitor results.  (Rigorous) impact evaluations help to test what works and what does not work. If combined with qualitative insights, they can uncover the impact mechanism (or lack thereof)  and how a development programme/project can be improved. Together  Monitoring, Impact Evaluation and Learning are the backbone of effective and successful  development cooperation.

We undertake feasibility studies and evaluation designs to find the most suitable monitoring system, and evaluation method for your development programme or project. We propose mixed-methods designs, using both qualitative and rigorous quantitative methods of evaluation. We do data monitoring, quantitative and qualitative data collection, data analysis, data visualisation, and learning workshops. We also undertake systematic evidence reviews in development cooperation to better understand what has worked and not worked so far in your project’s thematic area.

We design M&E frameworks and results-based M&E Systems. We conduct process evaluations, economic evaluations as well as programme and policy evaluations, including Rigorous impact evaluations, and  evidence-gap maps.

We know from experience that Development Cooperation programmes and their implementation partners often have to navigate the challenge of managing tight project timelines whilst complying with complex administrative processes, which can lead to significant bottlenecks that hampers execution.

We provide coaching and trainings to overcome such bottlenecks that build on our long-standing experience and in-depth understanding of the administration and management of development cooperation programmes. In doing so, we complement the work being undertaken by the contract department and project managers.

We provide training and coaching for operational planning, financial controlling (project level), procurement management (service contracts) and financing and grant agreements to German and international organisations working with public funds.