We adapt and tailor our approach to specific client needs and provide hands-on, medium to long term support for execution plans, policies and strategies.
This involves partnering with policy makers, business leaders, and donor organizations to translate policies, regulations and plans into concrete outcomes, complementing their delivery capacity with additional and diversified resources.
Whilst our work covers multiple sectors and subject matters, we primarily focus on youth engagement and empowerment initiatives, health systems planning and policy and climate resilience and digital transformation strategies.
Knowledge
We provide Africa-focused data and analysis to inform client actions and policy discourse on issues concerning Africa.
We provide holistic overviews of policy issues, development issues, economic sectors and demographic segments such as youth, women, and African diaspora, including statistical updates, qualitative insights, trends and analysis, and stakeholder mapping.
We produced a health policy review report for the Pandemic Action Network titled The State of Play: Pandemic Preparedness and Response in Africa.
The report – part of the Africa Pandemic Resilience initiative – discussed the continent’s health systems architecture and policy direction, identifying recurring challenges and recommended actions for strengthening African public health systems.
We plan, execute and/or support internal and external consultation, validation and dissemination efforts to inform organizational strategy and initiatives, invite partnership and participation, and update key collaborators on plans and activities. This includes stakeholder identification, outreach, planning, facilitation and analysis of interactions.
We supported the Mastercard Foundation’s engagement of policy, research and youth stakeholders across six East and West African countries as part of the rollout of their flagship Young Africa Works initiative. We produced interview guides, facilitated interviews and workshops and produced synthesis reports for internal dissemination and strategic planning.
We produce tailored reports on emerging issues and for client-specific information needs. We can adapt our teams, timelines and methodologies to effectively and efficiently provide insights and recommendations for approaching complex and variable issues.
We produced a policy brief on cross-sector collaboration for effective pandemic response entitled Africa Beyond COVID-19. The report was endorsed by H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Co-Chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. We We have also produced several internal facing issue briefs and reports for our clients.
We conduct monitoring and evaluation exercises, act as learning partners and knowledge management resources and produce intervention and impact case studies to improve organizational and ecosystem approaches to development-related issues. We enable the generation of insights and evidence from ongoing projects for real-time decision-making and adaptation.
Strategy
We provide a range of strategy development and implementation services to clients looking to expand their work across geographies or sectors, bringing our deep experience in Africa to international organizations and our immersion in youth context to organizations seeking to better engage Africa’s key demographic.
We provide ad hoc, confidential thought partnership to senior executives on individual strategic, tactical and operational issues.
We provide medium to long-term retained services for input to enterprise-wide planning and implementation.
We participate in the conceptualisation and design of products, services and initiatives as well as support entry to new markets, sectors and segments.
We assist both private organizations and their philanthropic affiliates to develop their economic development-related approaches and initiatives, including delineation of responsibilities between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) vs philanthropy teams.
For private firms, we provide guidance in areas such as ESG (environmental, social, governance assessment) ratings, risk and compliance; Diversity, equity and inclusions issues (DEI) and maximizing the contextualization, sustainability and impact of CSR initiatives.
For philanthropic organizations, we help to define and differentiate their theory of change and aligned activities.
We conduct strategy development and refresh exercises for functions, departments, geographies, segments or organizations. Our services are based on developing a deep understanding of the organization’s background, ethos, previous experiences, current circumstances and future aspirations.
We developed the inaugural organizational strategy and two-year refresh for Youth Combating NTDs, a new partner organization of Uniting to Combat NTDs that mobilizes young people across endemic and donor countries to advocate for accelerated disease control interventions. We also supported the development of a policy and thought leadership strategy for the Mastercard Foundation to amplify its efforts to drive youth employment in Africa.
We provide intelligence and insights to guide the development of new products, services and initiatives, especially where these pertain to serving new markets and demographics in Africa and the Global South. Services include scoping and capability or risk assessments, market entry studies and strategy development.
Implementation
We put our ideas to the test and go beyond analysis to design and implement transformative programs and products alongside our partners.
We facilitate training seminars and workshops on pre-produced content such as organizational policies and role-specific skills for orientation and onboarding, as well as sector and issue primers for organizations working in new areas.
We provide needs assessment, reference resource development and training delivery towards preparing organizations for new geographies, sectors, segments and strategic directions.
We produced a youth engagement toolkit including staff orientation and organizational change recommendations for a global partnership and conducted a senior staff training workshop based on the toolkit. This training prepared the partnership to integrate new youth-facing activities into their global operations.
We provide embedded staff and/or teams to organizations for a limited time to build out and pilot specific functions or execute on internal deliverables. This approach expands delivery capacity and complements existing staff skill sets in situations where permanent hires may not be appropriate but additional resources are required to work closely as part of an internal team.
We supported a client with operations in seven African countries in the development of a new core function serving multiple departments, providing specialized team members to ensure delivery of immediate function outputs in parallel with long term planning exercises. We assisted the function team in integrating and collaborating with multiple departments on enterprise-wide deliverables in the midst of a busy transition period.
We conduct the conceptualisation and setup of new programs, and subsidiary organizations for established entities; co-development of new organizations, and establishment of partnerships, working groups, coalitions and joint ventures. We can also provide medium to long-term program management services through secondment of dedicated operational staff.
We helped the Uniting to Combat NTDs partnership to develop and establish an affiliate youth-focused organization – Youth Combating NTDs (YCNTDs). We worked with Uniting to understand the potential role of youth mobilization in controlling or eradicating neglected tropical diseases, recruited and trained a youth advisory board and a global network of youth champions, and formally established the YCNTDs organization. We then provided core staff to the organization to implement its programs.
We support departments, organizations and groups to shift their internal processes, structures, norms and ways of working to achieve greater alignment with their vision and values, improve the delivery of strategic objectives, and adapt to changing context and circumstances. Our support ranges from the identification of change needs, to detailed readiness assessments, stakeholder engagement and co-creation/validation of plans, to step-by-step execution and post-hoc analysis.
Case study
Youth Employment and Participation
We helped a major philanthropy supporting youth livelihoods in Africa to develop their Policy and Thought Leadership strategy. The strategy will direct the foundation’s ecosystem shaping efforts to improve opportunities for young Africans and strengthen youth participation in relevant policy formulation. Future Africa Consulting was asked to develop the regional context informing the strategy and facilitate youth and other stakeholder engagement on its proposed components.
To do so, we:
- Conducted a regional landscaping of youth actors in priority issues areas from agriculture to digital economy; and produced country-specific issue briefs on the social, political, and economic determinants of youth opportunity.
- Planned and facilitated meetings and workshops across the continent with program teams and partners, policy makers, and diverse youth representatives, soliciting grounded perspectives and practical input to strategy development.
- Synthesized findings and supported drafting and review of the strategy document, with additional input to related research, reporting and convening initiatives being rolled out alongside the strategy
The engagement concluded with the approval and launch of the strategy, including a multi-million-dollar implementation budget. We are currently supporting the roll-out of the proposed initiatives across several African countries.