Photographer, Johnny MillerUnequal scenes; Photo by Johnny Miller
Economic Growth and Impact
Overview
A transformation is underway across Africa’s economies.
In the Economic Growth & Impact practice, our purpose is to grow Africa’s economy for Africa by designing and delivering inclusive, sustainable growth. We place flourishing societies and healthy ecosystems at the foundation of economic progress, not as an afterthought.
We see economic growth as one of the most powerful forces for improving lives at scale. When businesses, governments, and institutions work together beyond narrow mandates and embrace impact as a core driver of value, they unlock new pathways for jobs, opportunity, resilience, and long-term prosperity across the continent.
This is a whole new way of thinking about business. It needs new business philosophies, models and strategies, new functions, and new ways of measuring and talking about corporate impact. In addition, the relationship between corporates and the state requires careful navigation to be a constructive partnership, and for companies to be a bulwark against nationalist and populist politics.
Our job is to guide and encourage along that new path. Our Economic Growth and Impact practice is at the leading edge of this work globally, helping some of the world’s largest organisations, foundations and governments in four ways:
Over the past 20 years, we have forged trusted, long-term relationships across Africa. Our team draws on a blend of development economics, business strategy, environmental economics, political science and law.
We work with blue-chip companies operating across Africa advising boards, CEOs and senior executives in strategy, public policy and corporate affairs, and we have completed shared value, impact and public policy assignments in a range of industries among them mining, agriculture, banking, insurance, media and television, manufacturing, tourism and energy.
All our work sets out to consciously improve something in the world. It’s an exciting place to be.
Leading The Team
Areas of Expertise
Corporate impact and ESG
The analysis, measurement and improvement of social, economic and environmental (ESG) impact is more important than ever and businesses are increasingly expected to take a lead on societal and sustainability issues.
Impact can be assessed at the level of a company, an investment, a project or a sector. Such evaluation is an important tool in strategy, project implementation, regulatory advocacy, staff motivation and reputation management.
We are leaders in developing frameworks, tools and strategies that enhance sustainability and impact. Our expertise spans ESG, sustainability, net zero strategies, economic impact assessments, impact due diligences, ESG capacity building, and regulatory intervention design.
Digital livelihoods
Our Digital Livelihoods team of industry insiders and local practitioners focuses on digital job creation in Africa by unlocking global demand.
By 2030 half of all new entrants into the global labour force will come from Sub-Saharan Africa. Around 15 million new dignified, meaningful jobs will need to be created annually, with even more required as populations continue to rise.
Economic and regulatory impact assessments
Government policies and interventions create complex trade-offs. Changes in policies, laws and regulations, and active interventions, create both positive and negative impacts as well as winners and losers. We support governments and regulators across Africa to make the best regulatory decisions based on rigorous regulatory impact assessments.
Our assessments are founded on holistic data-driven impact analysis (cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis or multi-criteria analysis), expert stakeholder engagement facilitation, and customised regulatory and non-regulatory solutions co-designed with our clients.
In the private sector, we are leaders in helping to measure and articulate the social, economic and environmental value created (or destroyed) by a company, sector or investment. To do so we conduct extensive economic impact assessments, using a range of impact measurement techniques. These draw on market analysis, stakeholder engagement and surveys, and economic modeling.
In many cases, our public policy advisory relies on the objective analysis provided by our independent economic and regulatory impact assessments.
Just transition
Our Just Transition work addresses equity, distributional consequences of action and inaction, jobs and skills-building, amplifying marginalised voices, understanding the needs of ‘young’ countries, and mitigating the costs of structural changes to emerging and developing economies.
Political and public policy advisory for corporates
The active participation of the private and donor sectors in policy formulation is essential to ensuring well-informed, evidence-based, and context-appropriate law and regulation.
Our Political and Public Policy Advisory service line works with companies and foundations to understand and shape their policy operating environment.Projects
A new approach to impact reporting rolled out in Ghana with SCB
Standard Chartered Bank partnered with Genesis as impact advisors to develop a next generation approach to impact measurement and reporting. This new approach was rolled out in a case study on lending to the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors in Ghana.
Green options for Mpumalanga’s ageing coal power stations
Genesis was put at the helm of a project consortium to study the impact and mitigation of the planned shutdown of seven ageing coal-fired power plants in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The project was commissioned by the Nationally Determined Contributions Partnership, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and involved economists, engineers and social experts.
What value does Airbnb add to the South African economy?
Since its launch in 2015 Airbnb has grown rapidly in South Africa. Like other disruptive businesses, it has faced pushback from the traditional hospitality industry. To establish the contribution of Airbnb, the Shared Value practice at Genesis Analytics was asked to undertake an independent study to quantify the benefit of Airbnb to the economy.
Related Focus Areas
Infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness
Reproductive, maternal, child health and nutrition
Health financing and health systems optimisation
Digital health and data transformation
Agriculture and agribusiness
Africa’s agricultural sector is critical to sustainable economic development. It supports economic opportunities in rural communities, the alleviation of poverty and plays an essential role in food security. Genesis works across the public-private interface for governments, donors, philanthropic and private sector clients.
Unlocking the sector’s potential requires a combination of political will, enabling regulatory frameworks, improved access to finance, skills investment and climate change adaptation. An understanding of these interlocking factors underpins our approach to programme design and implementation.
Communications and broadcasting
We work with governments and regulators to cut through the complexities of digital markets and ensure that digital policy and regulation are fit for purpose, striking the optimal balance between intervention and innovation. Our work includes all aspects of governance and economic regulation including competition, digital rights, data protection and privacy, consumer protection, e-commerce, economic structure and digital trade.
Financial Services Strategy
Our Financial Services team has completed more than 1000 projects across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East since 2001. We work with leading financial institutions to address their challenges, unlock value for their stakeholders and shape the future of the industry.
Our team understands the evolving technology and market structures, economics and regulatory trends across all segments of the financial services sector. Our distinct approach is characterised by deep specialisation and rigorous analysis based on a strong economics foundation.
Health
We help to strengthen and support sustainable, country-owned health systems that can deliver positive, equitable health outcomes.
We bring deep knowledge and understanding of local contexts and combine this with technical and operational excellence. Our focus is on Africa and other countries with growing young populations across Asia and the Middle East.
Our technical areas of expertise include:
Manufacturing
The manufacturing sector ranges from industrial to fast-moving consumer goods. Genesis has extensive experience in providing services across this sector, from the manufacture of steel, cement, chemicals, resins and fertilizers to credit cards, supermarkets, cereals and tyres.
Working in this sector requires that economists quickly come to grips with technical issues of production and use of the products. At a retail and consumer level, economists must develop an understanding of competition dynamics that are often based on product differentiation through branding and marketing. They also need to understand the socio-economic impact of the sector.
In addition to the competition economics and international trade work, our Applied Behavioural Economics practice is also active in this sector. We understand that humans routinely use biases and heuristics to make decisions, and that this often results in atypical or unexpected outcomes. We have proven that businesses can derive considerable value from designing for the fallibility of human decision-making, especially in the consumer-goods sector – whether that be in product design, marketing, sales, service, channels, or other functional areas.