CASA NEXUS / Industries

Sectors · Kenya & East Africa

Sector knowledge is not a slide. It is knowing what fails here.

Every sector has a characteristic failure: the place where budgets leak, where evidence goes thin, where a good headline number hides a bad outcome. We work in seven of them, and the reason clients come back is that we know the failure before we arrive.

Where we work

Each sector, and the capability it draws on

01 · Public sector

Government & infrastructure finance

Sovereign funds, infrastructure vehicles, and the fiscal architecture around them. The characteristic failure here is a sound policy logic attached to governance machinery that cannot carry it, which shows up years later as a stalled portfolio and an unrepayable debt position.

  • Independent baseline evaluation of public funds and instruments
  • Full Detailed Evaluation Reports on the SSII instrument
  • Social Return on Investment tracking architecture
  • Scenario analysis of unaddressed design gaps
  • Public finance and expenditure credibility analysis
The Kenya Presidencies series
02 · Humanitarian

INGOs, UN agencies & donors

Organisations delivering in contested, remote, and rapidly changing environments, now under funding pressure that is structural rather than cyclical. The failure mode is a compliance system built for a funding era that has ended.

  • Independent programme evaluation and mid-term review
  • Donor compliance, grants management, and audit readiness
  • Access, safety, and security planning for hard-to-reach delivery
  • Portfolio-wide partner capacity assessment
Read The INGO Reckoning
03 · Health & protection

Health, GBV & safeguarding

Our deepest specialist bench. The characteristic failure is a programme reporting strong reach and service numbers while protection quietly fails underneath. Our method caps the rating when that happens rather than letting the output score absorb it.

  • Gender-based violence and protection advisory
  • Safeguarding audit and remediation
  • Behaviour change communication design and campaign delivery
  • Voices at the Edge, our GBV survivor and advocacy programme
Protection advisory
04 · Civil society

NGOs, CBOs & community organisations

Grassroots organisations with real reach and real legitimacy that cannot yet win or manage serious funding, because governance, finance, and measurement systems are not where donors need them. The failure is structural, not motivational.

  • CBO Readiness Accelerator, donor-ready in 90 days
  • Rapid organisational assessment and ranked gap list
  • Board governance audit and remediation
  • Embedded accelerator for a whole portfolio of partners
Capacity programmes
05 · Corporate

Banks, telcos & corporate foundations

Companies whose community investment budget is not the constraint. The failure is that the spend produces activity photographs rather than outcomes, and a report the board cannot defend if anyone asks a second question.

  • CSR programme design and end-to-end delivery
  • Independent CSR impact measurement and reporting
  • Corporate–community partnership facilitation
  • Managed CSR fund, run as a service
Foundation & CSR
06 · Climate & land

Climate, agriculture & resilience

Arid and semi-arid lands, pastoralist economies, and climate finance flowing into both. The failure is a resilience programme measured on inputs delivered during a good season, then quietly overwhelmed by the next drought cycle.

  • Baseline and needs assessment before deployment
  • Climate finance readiness and fund design review
  • Rapid field assessment and data collection during shocks
  • Longitudinal learning partnerships across seasons
Research & Evaluation
07 · Education & youth

Education, skills & the youth economy

Where our own research is most pointed. Kenya’s youth cohort is the most digitally native in the country’s history and, we argue, its most economically misaligned. Programmes here often succeed at engagement and fail at productive outcomes.

  • Youth economy and labour market analysis
  • Skills and enterprise programme evaluation
  • Behaviour change communication for youth audiences
  • Executive Voice and studio training for emerging leaders
Read The Aesthetics Trap
Hard places

Where most firms decline the scope

The places where evidence is thinnest are the places where decisions cost the most.

Access, safety and security A standing service line, not an exception we make. See it on the Consulting practice page.

A large share of what we do sits in the northern frontier counties, arid and semi-arid lands, informal settlements, and communities where a visiting team cannot simply arrive and start collecting data. These are the environments where a programme most needs independent evidence and is least likely to get it.

We staff for that: field researchers who work in those languages and communities, protection protocols built into the study design rather than bolted on, and access planning that treats the safety of enumerators and respondents as a design constraint rather than a risk register entry.

Your sector, your problem

Tell us what is failing and we will tell you whether we can fix it.

If it sits outside what we do well, we will say so and point you somewhere better. That answer costs you one conversation.