Our work

Situation

GIZ's i4Ag fund supports 40 agricultural innovations across 32 countries. It needed a rigorous, reusable way to profile that portfolio: one that presents innovations convincingly to outside funders and lets GIZ organise and compare them internally.

Approach

Reviewed the leading innovation profiling frameworks, designed a modular, funder-facing profile template, piloted it on live innovations, and built the training so GIZ’s own team could run profiling themselves.

Outcome

GIZ adopted the template as the standard for the i4Ag fund, then increased the contract by 43%, exercised the full option and extended the term to December 2026.

Situation

Global Good had a portable, pay-as-you-go solar pump kit for smallholder farmers. Before committing to a launch, it needed to know which African market gave it the best chance, what a viable business model looked like on the ground, and whether farmers would pay.

Approach

Scored six countries on a 53-point evaluation matrix with a 10-member expert panel, assessed 60 potential partner organisations, mapped the value chain in the two strongest markets, and designed the willingness-to-pay test.

Outcome

In six weeks Global Good moved from a promising product to a clear market choice, a grounded business model and a ready-to-run demand test. The six markets are now the main targets of major solar irrigation investment.

Situation

A European development finance institution was deciding how to deploy ecosystem-building resources from a EUR 6.5 million technical assistance facility in Morocco. Before committing them, it needed to know who the key actors were, where the gaps were, and how to get the findings to the people who could act on them.

Approach

In a competitively selected consortium led by LixCap, we built the intelligence layer: a public, interactive map of the ecosystem’s actors, links and gaps, and a plan to get the findings in front of the people who mattered.

Outcome

The institution went on to fund ecosystem support aligned with what the landscaping surfaced: stronger support organisations, investment readiness and connections to international investors.

Situation

Kohler and the nonprofit iDE needed to know whether Kohler’s household water filter could succeed with lower-income consumers in Ghana: was there real demand, what would people pay, and what business model could reach them?

Approach

Ran pop-up shops in four cities to test demand and price, trialled door-to-door, group and retail sales, surveyed more than 100 consumers as they used the product, and interviewed 20 stakeholders.

Outcome

Delivered demand validation, pricing, sales-channel options and a phased pilot roadmap, giving Kohler and iDE a concrete basis for testing and scaling decisions.

Situation

Rwanda needed a national strategy to scale its innovation economy, along with the institutions to run it, financing for high-growth tech firms, and the market intelligence to attract investment and global partners.

Approach

As Emerging Technology & Innovation Ecosystems Advisor at the Tony Blair Institute, Jason Eaves architected the framework for the national strategy, built the team to implement it, and designed a dedicated early-stage financing facility.

Outcome

Rwanda’s first National Innovation Strategy and Innovation Authority framework were established, alongside a $20M early-stage financing facility for tech-enabled firms.

Situation

Élan RDC, a UK Aid programme raising the incomes of smallholder producers and entrepreneurs in the DRC, needed its research and results to reach national, provincial and practitioner audiences, and to show its funder credible impact.

Approach

Interviewed teams in Goma and Kinshasa, ran adaptive management training, tailored the programme’s findings to three audiences, and targeted 92 content platforms to carry them.

Outcome

68.4% publication success for high-priority documents and 333,000 total reach across committed platforms, putting the programme’s research in front of the practitioners and investors it needed to influence.