The Impact Ledger
Our podcast and field films put real expertise in front of the people who commission this work, so donors and partners can see the outcomes, not just the promises.
Research, evaluation & delivery
Africa does not have an evidence shortage. It has an evidence independence problem.
Most of the analysis that shapes African policy is commissioned abroad, priced abroad, and published abroad. CASA NEXUS is a Kenyan firm that does the research itself, publishes it openly, and then builds the systems that act on it.
- Founded
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Method
- The SSII Framework™
- Practices
- Consulting, Research, Media, Foundation
- Latest
- The Kenya Presidencies, Vols I–IV
- Access
- Research published open access
53/100
Our independent baseline score for Kenya’s National Infrastructure Fund, published the day it was signed into law.
SSII baseline
KSh 5T
The decade target of the fund we evaluated, and the reason its design gaps are worth naming early.
NIF ten-year ambition
60yrs
Of Kenyan executive government scored on one fixed instrument, across four issued volumes of a five-volume evaluation series.
The Kenya Presidencies
Open
Our policy research carries no paywall. If it is going to shape a national decision, it should be readable.
Publication policy
Featured research
CASA Research Pillar · Open access
Policy & Evaluation Series · March 2026
What the Evidence Shows, What the Gaps Mean, and What Ignoring Them Will Cost Kenya
On 9 March 2026, the National Infrastructure Fund Act was signed into law at State House Nairobi. By that evening, CASA NEXUS had completed the first independent evaluation of the Fund. We did not wait for an invitation. An NIF of this consequence should not have its design strengths and weaknesses argued inside government memos alone.
The report adds something the Kenyan policy debate did not have: a practical architecture for tracking Social Return on Investment, and a scenario analysis of what happens to that return if the recommendations go unaddressed.
53 / 100
Bronze upper tier · SSII
The Fund is credible. The policy logic is sound, and its governance architecture, though imperfect, carries more safeguards than most comparable funds launched on the continent at this stage.
But 53 out of 100 is a Bronze score. And a Bronze fund cannot build a Gold economy.
Capabilities
Commission one practice, or the whole arc
Four practices working from a single evidence base.
The research is not a marketing exercise sitting beside the consulting. It is the same standard, applied to your organisation instead of a national fund.
01
Consulting
Design · Governance · Compliance
Project design and set-up, donor readiness, grants and finance compliance, monitoring systems, and safe access in hard places. We work inside the project, not beside it.
02Research & Evaluation
Evidence · Baselines · Policy
Programme evaluations, baselines, field data, and policy analysis. We score performance and confidence separately, so you always know how much weight a finding can bear.
03Media & Communication
Voice · Studio · Behaviour change
A Nairobi studio for executive presence, owned media, and campaigns built to move behaviour rather than impressions. Findings become something people actually hear.
04Foundation & CSR
Community investment · Reporting
For companies whose community budget needs to become outcomes on the ground and a report the board can defend. Designed, delivered, and measured end to end.
Not sure which one you need? Start from your sector, or describe the problem and we will tell you.
Our method
Applied to national funds and to single programmes alike
Most evaluations tell you what happened. Ours tell you what it will cost to ignore.
The SSII Framework™
The Strategic Systems Integrity & Impact Framework. Our own instrument, behind every published evaluation and every client assessment we run.
SSII reads a programme across five interacting system layers, political, institutional, programmatic, protective and economic, and reports two numbers rather than one: how well the system performed, and how well that finding can be proven. The second number is not a footnote. It fixes the strongest verb the evaluation is allowed to use about the first.
It is the reason our reports end in decisions rather than findings, and the reason a safeguarding failure cannot hide behind a strong headline number.
SIS
Strategic Integrity Score
How well did the system work?
The weighted performance of five pillars across twenty-five dimensions, 0 to 100, with a rating band that carries a stated decision: suspend, restructure, reform, monitor, or scale.
ECI
Evidence Confidence Index
How well can we prove it?
The strength of the record behind the finding, scored separately and published beside it. Its band sets the Claim Licence, the strongest verb any product of the evaluation may use.
Recent publications
Policy analysis from the CASA Research Pillar
The Kenya Presidencies: Sixty Years, One Instrument
Four administrations, from independence to 2022, scored against the five pillars and twenty-five dimensions of the SSII Framework, on a weight vector fixed at the first volume and unchanged since. Self-commissioned, no external client, no funder constraint on publication.
Composites run from 31.60 to 52.80. The Safeguarding Veto fired in all four volumes, and in Volume III it changed the published verdict rather than restating one the arithmetic had already reached. Protection scores rose from 28.00 to 52.00 across the series, which establishes protection performance as a variable of the Kenyan state rather than a constant of it.
From Revenue Rage to Fiscal Reckoning
Public debate is over-concentrated on one instrument when three should be in view. The Finance Bill is a revenue tool, not the fiscal system itself. With debt service absorbing about 69 per cent of ordinary revenue, new revenue is servicing debt rather than expanding productive capital.
The INGO Reckoning: Save Lives or Shape Out
A critical review of humanitarian actor strategies at the convergence of conflict, climate, and compounding crisis. The international humanitarian system is at a reckoning that is not merely a funding crisis or a political rupture, but a structural failure.
The Aesthetics Trap: Gen-Z, TikTok Commerce & Africa’s Growth Deficit
Kenya’s Gen-Z cohort is the most digitally native generation in the country’s history, and potentially its most economically misaligned. A case study on why an entrepreneurial ethic anchored in platform aesthetics is a structural risk to real growth.
Why commission a Kenyan firm
The case, stated plainly
01
We are already here when the work starts
No inception phase spent learning the country. Our analysts live in the market they are analysing, which is why we could evaluate the NIF on the day it was signed rather than a quarter later.
02
Senior expertise at African cost structures
The same methodological rigour international firms bring, without the flight time, the expatriate premium, or the six-figure inception budget. Rigour is a standard, not a price point.
03
We stay through the phase everyone skips
Diagnose, design, deliver, sustain. Most partners stop at deliver and hand you a report. The sustain phase is where a recommendation becomes a system your own team runs without us.
Industries
Where the work lands
We work where the decisions are consequential and the evidence is thin.
Public sector
Government & infrastructure finance
Sovereign funds, infrastructure vehicles, and the fiscal architecture around them, evaluated independently and published.
See the workHumanitarian
INGOs, UN agencies & donors
Evaluation, compliance, and safe access for organisations delivering in contested and hard-to-reach places.
See the workHealth & protection
Health, GBV & protection
Specialist depth in gender-based violence, safeguarding, and behaviour change, where a good headline number can hide a failure.
See the workCorporate
Banks, telcos & corporate foundations
Community investment that produces outcomes on the ground and a report the board can stand behind.
See the work
On the record
CASA Media Network
Two programmes putting the people who do this work in front of the people who commission it.
Research that stays in a PDF changes nothing. Our studio takes the findings, and the people behind them, to the audiences that decide what gets funded.
Voices at the Edge
Voices at the Edge amplifies women’s voices: those currently experiencing gender-based violence who are strong enough to use their voices and start meaningful conversations about it, and those who have survived and attained sovereignty.
Client record
Proof, not promises
The work speaks, and so do our clients.
Our promise is simple: we embed until the change holds, and we measure outcomes rather than activities. Here is what that has looked like for a partner we have worked alongside since 2020.
Since partnering with CASA NEXUS in 2020, our M&E capabilities have transformed. Donor reporting is now evidence-based and timely, our institutional systems are robust, and their BCC campaigns have delivered measurable behaviour change in the communities we serve.
Northern Frontier Youth League (NoFYL)
Start here, no pressure
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