If your institution is navigating a strategic question that does not have a textbook answer, we want to hear about it. Every serious inquiry receives a personal response within two business days.
A first email that tells us what you are navigating, what success would look like, and what timeline you are working in lets us respond with something more useful than a generic acknowledgment. You do not need to know the exact scope yet — but the more context you can share, the more substantive our first reply will be.
Our clients are institutions whose decisions carry weight — and that require evidence-based analysis they can defend internally and externally. We do not work with everyone, and we are honest about it. The four categories below describe most of our engagements.
USAID, EU institutions, GIZ, FCDO, AFD, SDC, and similar agencies seeking independent analysis to inform portfolio decisions, programme design, evaluation, and country strategy in North Africa.
UN agencies, the World Bank Group, and other multilateral institutions requiring evidence-based analysis to underpin country programming, joint assessments, and policy advice to host governments.
Private foundations and international NGOs seeking strategic guidance on programme design, theory of change, evaluation, and adaptation in fragile and politically constrained environments.
Government ministries and public-sector clients in the region seeking analytical support on policy formulation, institutional reform, security and development strategy, and evidence-based decision-making.
A serious engagement deserves a serious scoping process. Most inquiries follow a four-step path from first contact to a signed scope of work — typically across two to four weeks.
Within 48 hours, you receive a personal reply from a senior member of the team — not a templated acknowledgment. We confirm receipt, indicate whether the inquiry fits our practice, and propose a brief introductory call.
A 45–60 minute no-cost conversation to understand your context in depth, your constraints, and what a useful engagement would look like. Often, this conversation alone clarifies the question enough to make next steps obvious.
Within 7 days, a written proposal with clear objectives, methodology, team composition, timeline, and budget. Honest about what we will deliver and what falls outside the scope. We do not pad proposals to make them look more impressive.
We expect to refine the scope with you. Strong engagements are co-designed, not handed over. Once we are aligned, contracting is fast — and the work begins on schedule.
We are deliberately not the right partner for every inquiry.
If your question is fundamentally about compliance reporting, high-volume deliverable production, or process work that does not require strategic judgment — there are firms better positioned than ours, and we will tell you so.
We are at our best on questions involving strategic uncertainty, analytical depth, regional contextualisation, or methodological rigour in domains where our practitioners have operational experience. When that fit is present, we work hard to earn the engagement.
When it is not, we would rather refer you elsewhere than take on work we cannot do well. The institution's long-term credibility depends on this. So does our clients'.