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Will AI such as ChatGPT be an opportunity or a threat to the consulting industry? How should the The Competition Commission South Africa balance economic empowerment with the need to maintain a competitive market? How important is a good working knowledge of history in the consulting industry? How important is it to take ‘the long view’ in consulting when clients demand immediate solutions and partners demand immediate returns?

Genesis Analytics founder and chair Stephan Malherbe answers a wide range of questions from Stellenbosch University academic Johan Fourie. To read more of his interviews with leading South Africans, access Fourie’s blog Our Long Walk.

Genesis Analytics brought together 100 people from passionate education organisations, educators, researchers and innovators for the Numeracy Research and Development (NRD) Challenge second information session. Together, we explored how to tackle one of education's toughest challenges: foundational numeracy for underserved learners in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

This session was not only a deep dive into the state of math education, where UNESCO Institute for Statistics data shows that approximately 80% of children struggle to meet proficiency by Grade 3, but also a call to action for bold, scalable solutions. Read more here

The November Bletchley Declaration on AI Safety is a landmark declaration that sees 28 countries from across the globe including Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the EU, agreeing to the urgent need to better understand and collectively manage potential risks of AI. Countries endorsing the Declaration include Brazil, France, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates.

The African continent needs to create between 12 – 15 million jobs annually to absorb young people who are entering the labour market. Therefore, the profound transformation that the African entrepreneurship landscape has been undergoing is encouraging. Africa has one of the highest rates of entrepreneurship. Over 20% of working-age Africans started a new business and around 75% of young people plan to start one within five years. 

Zambia has incredible biodiversity, but the economy is heavily reliant on natural resources. Genesis Analytics has worked with the United Nations Development Programme Biodiversity Finance Initiative team to make recommendations to Zambian financial decision makers about how to integrate biodiversity considerations into their prudential supervision.

Following the conclusion of the Cali Biodiversity COP16, Genesis partner Marcela Tarazona and consultant Belinda Kaimuri-Kyalo, MSc report on how we can mitigate these risks and promote climate-friendly investments that benefit both the economy and the environment by making informed policy and investment decisions.

Youth are the driving force behind a brighter future, and in the Evaluation for Development (E4D) team, we are committed to working with our clients and partners to empower young people by creating meaningful economic opportunities.

I haven’t been the most consistent LinkedIn poster this year, so I’m wrapping it all up in one! 2024 was a year of incredible growth for me professionally, with new projects, challenges, and exciting travels.

Here’s a quick recap of the key projects I worked on in each location.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) acts as a guide to help stakeholders ask and answer questions about the outcomes of their interventions. Data alone is not enough to convey complex narratives and data visualisation turns mundane spreadsheets and numbers into dynamic graphics, charts, and interactive dashboards to bridge the gap between data and decision-making.

Have you ever felt sceptical about a claim that a company, programme or policy creates hundreds of thousands of jobs or contributes several percent to GDP? You’re not alone.

As economic impact assessment specialists, we spend a lot of time rigorously calculating past or future economic impact, and addressing inevitable questions that arise from economic claims. Below we’ll break down (i) why we use economic impact assessment, (ii) why economic impact assessment may rightly elicit a healthy dose of scepticism, and (iii) how we can address that scepticism by making economic impact assessments as transparent and effective as possible.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, education stands as a beacon of hope and a catalyst for social and economic transformation, with the power to emancipate individuals, strengthen communities, and fuel sustainable development. However, challenges such as limited resources, the legacy of colonialism, infrastructure gaps, and socio-economic disparities pose significant barriers to education quality and access in the region.

Looking ahead to 2024, the stage is set for a competitive and engaging year in Nigeria’s financial inclusion and digital financial services sector.

This follows an eventful 2023, which saw several factors shaping the sector: a persistent and widening gender gap in the access to and usage of financial services, a fast-evolving and highly competitive environment among payments players, and the increased uptake of digital lending products.

In my experience of designing and evaluating development projects, I keep returning to one question: how effectively do these initiatives and investments reach their target communities? There seems to be a trade-off between the ease and predictability of solutions and their actual impact.