Agriculture and Food Security
Put simply, agriculture drives development. Agriculture today accounts for 10% of global economic output and provides livelihoods for more than 2 billion people in low and middle-income countries. Our experience ranges from analyzing and improving agricultural value chains, to increasing public and private investments into the sector, and establishing inclusive supply chains. A significant proportion of our work focuses on understanding, empowering, and advocating for smallholder farmers.
Analytics
We use a data-driven approach to define and accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth. Even in data scare environments, we source reliable and timely data, produce comprehensive landscaping studies and build customized models. We create specialized, user-friendly tools that allow organizations to gain meaningful insights and better target, implement, and evaluate their programs and initiatives.
Cities
Cities drive the economic performance of nations and the pace of development around the world. Cities are home to more than half the world’s population now and will be home to two-thirds of the world’s population by 2050. We work with diverse urban actors to help cities define purposeful goals and plans, identify challenges, collaborate through global networks and partnerships, experiment with potential solutions, and adapt to change continuously. We have supported inclusive and resilient urban growth through strategy, design, big data analysis and evaluation, and partnership-building.
Climate & Environment
More than ever, the health and prosperity of individuals, communities, and nations are deeply intertwined with the natural ecosystems that sustain them. The great challenge of this century is to meet the growing demand for food, fresh water, energy, and other resources that advance human development while protecting our ecosystems. Meeting this challenge requires finding solutions at the intersection of human and natural systems. Our work — with businesses, governments, foundations, and non-profits — recognizes the interdependency of human progress and the environment to protect the world’s most vulnerable people and ecosystems. Our expertise includes strategy and policy design, partnership building and creation of financing models.
Conflict and Humanitarian Aid
In the midst of limited funding, higher expectations, and a protracted refugee crisis, successful humanitarian action is increasingly difficult. But smarter solutions are within reach – we can help humanitarian actors face these changing dynamics. Dalberg helps clients design effective strategies, establish new partnerships, identify innovative financing sources, and improve aid delivery for timely and effective humanitarian responses. We support a diverse range of humanitarian actors in becoming more flexible and in preparing to face the humanitarian scenarios of the future. Our expertise spans strategy design, product and service development, impact measurement, and advocacy.
Education to Employment
The potential of youth remains untapped today. Over 200 million people are out of work globally, resulting in social and political conflicts and migration, and permanently lowered future productive potential and earnings. Dalberg partners with educational institutions, corporations, foundations, NGOs, and governments to strengthen the education to employment pathway. Our expertise includes employment acceleration through aptitude matching, labor market analysis, and strategic investment for job creation.
Energy
We help our clients – from governments to multinationals and financial institutions – increase the supply of economically viable, environmentally sustainable, socially equitable energy. Our expertise spans designing evidence-based strategies for entering emerging markets, developing business models for doing business with low-income consumers, policy analysis, innovative financing to find energy delivery models.
Financial Inclusion
An estimated 2 billion people lack access to formal financial services, like bank accounts, that are critical to transact efficiently, accumulate wealth, and protect against shocks. Additionally, 200 million informal and formal businesses are financially unserved or underserved – without access to the capital they need to grow. Dalberg works with companies, foundations, development institutions, and governments to develop innovative strategies for providing high-quality, appropriate financial services to underserved individuals, communities, and businesses. Our expertise includes catalyzing investment, designing solutions such as savings products, and bringing together public and private sector stakeholders to facilitate collective action.
Gender
Dalberg works with governments, foundations, NGOs, and companies to empower people of all genders and socioeconomic backgrounds to participate fully in economic, political, and social life. Based on principles of gender equity embodied across the Dalberg platform, we help our clients ensure that their greatest asset, people, thrive and achieve their full potential. We design programs that tackle root causes of gender inequalities and not the symptoms, alongside actively identifying and mitigating unintended consequences. Our past work has included strategy, capacity building and monitoring and evaluation.
Health and Nutrition
The political, social, and economic health of a nation and the health of its individual people are inextricably linked. Only with citizens of able body and mind can a country hope to build a vibrant, inclusive, and equitable economy and raise living standards. From product innovation to big data analysis to strengthening community health systems, Dalberg works with governments, donors, the private sector, and NGOs to achieve positive outcomes in global health and nutrition in the world’s most underserved regions.
Human-Centered Design
Human centered design (HCD) emerged from the private sector and has been gaining traction in the social impact field for fostering new and lasting solutions. HCD prioritizes a participatory, bottom-up process where end users and other stakeholders play a lead role in shaping solutions to meet their needs. We apply HCD methods to stakeholders across the entire value chain – from agents to government officials – to support better decision-making and institutional change. Our expertise includes service and program design, product and business prototypes, innovation strategy and capacity building and design labs.
ICT and Big data
The digital revolution is one of the greatest and most transformative events in human history, presenting both opportunity and a responsibility to harness technology for a prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable world. Technology is creating new jobs, lowering transaction costs, and delivering vital information to those who need it most. At Dalberg, we work with private companies, governments, leading foundations, NGOs, and civil society groups to harness digital technology for amplified impact, sustainable value, and cost reduction in sectors ranging from health to agriculture, from energy to financial services. We use big data analysis to build tools to help policymakers and other stakeholders plan more effective projects.
Impact Investing
We partner with a diverse range of investors, fund managers and supporting actors to maximize the financial and non-financial returns of their investments. We help our clients develop focused investment strategies to deploy their capital with impact. We bridge our clients’ objectives with the reality of local contexts, by structuring appropriate instruments and helping to guide effective execution. Our services range from one-off transaction advisory, to ongoing impact investment advisory, to fund structuring to eco-system and knowledge building.
Implementation
We understand that the best research, analysis, and strategic recommendations cannot alone change the world, that’s why we’ve begun to work alongside our clients to bring solutions to life. We move beyond typical, linear project management trajectories, to an integrated project management unit that has insight across all phases of program implementation. We provide clients with dynamic access to the full range of Dalberg capabilities and capacity to, enhance and amplify development operations.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is a backbone of development: power lines deliver energy to homes and businesses; pipes provide clean water to drink; roads, railways, and bridges connect communities; and internet connectivity fosters new digital economies. Sustainable infrastructure has the power to bolster the economic growth, resilience, health, and environments of entire nations. We support our clients – governments, private investors, institutions – to develop inclusive and sustainable infrastructure in emerging markets.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
At Dalberg, evaluation goes beyond reporting and accountability to the bigger picture: value creation. Without a focused learning agenda, mistakes are likely to be repeated and efficiencies unrealized; that’s why Dalberg partners with clients, networks, and emerging industries to develop fit for purpose monitoring, evaluation, and learning tools. We build results measurement strategies, actionable learning agendas, and robust evaluation methodologies; we’ll develop evaluation strategies, lead and coordinate learning agendas, and conduct strategic reviews or rigorous evaluations.
Organizational Effectiveness
Regardless of your theory of change, strategy, or goals, running an effective organization and having a strong collaborative culture is paramount to achieving your mission. We support mission-driven organizations across the public, private, and non-profit sectors to diagnose, design, and implement initiatives that help to strengthen their organizational foundation.
Public Policy
Government policies play a crucial role in advancing – or impeding – economic well-being and human rights. Political decisions in the Global North around foreign aid amounts, trade policies, and environmental statutes reverberate around the world. Policymaking decisions in the developing world – from domestic resource mobilization through taxation to regulatory regimes governing the use of technology – can mean the difference between successful development programming and intractable barriers to impact. At Dalberg, we help clients seize political opportunities and confront constraints.
Research
From harnessing big data to door-to-door primary research to analytical approaches though participatory methods, Dalberg can employ the appropriate data collection strategy to answer any question. We provide quality primary data and in-depth research to help clients better understand the drivers of complex problems in emerging markets where data and insights are often sparse.
Strategy
Our world is rapidly changing. Geopolitical and economic balances are shifting and new multilateral and regional institutions are emerging. In this increasingly complex environment, formulating the right strategy is crucial. We support governments, multilateral organizations, corporations, NGOs, and foundations to design strategies that will maximize their scale, efficiency and impact, either at the organizational level or for specific programs and markets. Our experience spans public, private, and social sectors and includes the creation of: organizational strategies, investment strategies, new initiative designs and program implementation roadmaps.
Talent & Leadership
Regardless of your theory of change, strategy, or goals, running an effective organization and having a strong collaborative culture is paramount to achieving your mission. We support mission-driven organizations, across the public, private and non-profit sectors, to diagnose, design and implement initiatives that help to strengthen their organizational foundation.
Water and Sanitation
Water is a vital resource for life, but less than 0.1% of water on the Earth is fresh and accessible. Populations increase, economies grow, and urbanization continues, yet water supply has not kept pace. By 2030, water demand will outstrip supply by 40% globally as industry, agriculture, and consumers compete for this valuable resource. Dalberg works with governments, NGOs, businesses, and foundations to develop solutions that address the infrastructural, behavioral, and policy roots of complex, water-related problems. We enable our clients to plan, develop, distribute, and manage freshwater resources effectively to protect the lives and potential of people and our environment.
