We partner with and serve communities, governments and companies throughout the world, providing an innovative mix of services across a broad range of topics. Select one of the sectors or services below to learn more about Dalberg’s approach, and explore some of our projects and initiatives on the map.
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EXPLORE A SNAPSHOT OF OUR EXPERIENCE
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.
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GLOBAL
A rapid response to the Syrian refugee crisis
We produced a rapid information brief to evaluate current responses to the Syrian refugee crisis for The Rockefeller Foundation. We explored the potential role that innovative finance solutions could play in addressing the challenges of the refugee crisis, and what existing humanitarian and resilience-building solutions could make a meaningful impact.
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GLOBAL
How can investors create transformational innovation?
We developed a series of issue briefs focusing on key questions for philanthropists around how to achieve transformational innovation. Our challenge was to dig behind the wealth of existing insights around this question to uncover meaningful and practical insights
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AFRICA
Understanding financial services for micro, small, and medium enterprises
We worked with the World Bank to run a survey in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia to help understand the accessibility and price ranges of services offered by banks, insurance firms and accountants to micro, small, and medium enterprises.
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AFRICA, KENYA
Examining international value chains
We partnered with the World Bank on their flagship project on international agriculture value chains in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. We interviewed value chain actors, food processors, government institutions and over 600 farmers to examine the impact of scheme arrangements and discuss supply chains.
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GLOBAL
The state of the off-grid appliance market
We created the first ever snapshot of the global off-grid appliance market, including key market trends in the most promising categories: fans, televisions and refrigerators. This data-driven analysis discusses barriers to the market’s development and areas of opportunity based on insights from manufacturers, industry representatives, technical experts, policymakers and researchers.
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INDIA
Developing a roadmap to invest in healthcare in India
We helped USAID to develop a roadmap to invest in healthcare in India. We identified three key priorities for their investments: strengthen the financing landscape for health, engage the private sectors to improve health outcomes, and support innovative products, technologies, processes and business models.
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RWANDA
Evaluating the global agriculture and food security program in Rwanda
We completed a baseline study to evaluate the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program in Rwanda. We interviewed around 1,800 farmers from both treatment and comparison cooperatives in 11 districts of Rwanda
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KENYA
Surveying digital payments in Kenya
We completed a baseline survey on an intervention project launched by FSD Kenya to stimulate e-payments. We collected baseline data on initial payments patterns, payments perceptions, and the implications of payments choices to assess levels of change at the end of the study.
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GLOBAL
Determining the global potential for water kiosks
We conducted in-depth field research of 10 major water kiosk ventures, analyzed 4 innovative ventures and developed a market model to determine the global potential for water kiosks. We published a sector report, detailing cross-venture learnings, and recommendations for ventures and ecosystem actors.
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ASIA
Protecting tigers from Asia’s infrastructure development boom
We developed a report with the WWF exploring how to double the number of wild tigers by safeguarding them from the threats of infrastructure development. We outlined specific calls to action for governments, multilateral banks, private investors and the public.
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AFRICA
The impact of investments on education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
We demonstrated how impact investment can support the growth and integration of education systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The report details the impact of private investment across students, providers, governments and investors.
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INDIA
Designing innovative products and services to meet the financial needs of the poor
We worked with one of India’s largest MFIs to understand the customer experience of the urban poor, develop and pilot service improvements that meet the financial needs of customers, and create a playbook to help scale these improvements nationwide.
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KENYA
Identifying innovative business models for direct-to-farmer financing
We conducted primary research with smallholder farmers and facilitated a multi-stakeholder system mapping and design lab to identify innovative business models for direct-to-farmer financing. We also created an innovation agenda for future product development investment.
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INDIA, INDONESIA, KENYA
Empowering women to use the mobile internet
We produced a groundbreaking report – based on primary user research in Kenya, India, and Indonesia – that analyzes the challenges women face when accessing mobile internet with low mobile literacy and digital skills, and presented recommendations for key stakeholders to address them.
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KENYA
Studying the demand for off-grid electricity in Kenya
We studied the demand for off-grid electricity – and investment costs and potential returns of the sector. The study was conducted in 20 remotely located sites across Kenya reaching 2,000 households, small businesses and institutions.
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UNITED STATES
Decoding diversity: The financial and economic returns of diversity in tech
We worked with Intel to complete a rigorous analysis of gender and ethnic diversity in the U.S. tech workforce. We quantified that improving diversity in the technology sector could create $470 – $570Bn in new value for the tech industry, and could add 1.2 – 1.6% to US GDP.
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AFRICA
Evaluating two agricultural inventions in Sub-Saharan Africa
We evaluated the income and nutrition related impact of the two interventions in selected agricultural clusters in Benin, Mali, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania. We interviewed a totally of 4,800 farmers of a specific crop.
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INDIA
Studying inclusive businesses in India and Sri Lanka
We conducted a market scoping study of the inclusive business sector in India and Sri Lanka to understand how lack of debt and equity finance is limiting businesses’ growth and impact. We made recommendations on the design of a proposed Asian Development Bank inclusive business private equity fund.
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NIGERIA
Assessing the effect of policy on financial inclusion in Nigeria
We assessed the effect of policy on financial inclusion in Nigeria through interviews with over 50 stakeholders from commercial and microfinance banks, mobile operators, and enabling institutions such as card companies and regulators. The resulting report bolstered advocacy efforts to increase access to financial services.
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GLOBAL
Catalyzing the potential 8 Trillion USD digital persons-to-government payment industry
We completed the first-ever study to identify the opportunities and challenges of the potential 8 trillion USD digital persons-to-government (P2G) payment industry, with Karandaaz Pakistan and CGAP.
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KENYA
Interviewing 2,800 farmers to evaluate Plantwise Clinics
We conducted a survey across 14 counties in Kenya to evaluate Plantwise clinics, which diagnose plant health problems. We evaluated the local sources of information on soil fertility and plant diseases, and listed over 5,600 farmers across 300 locations in Kenya, interviewing 2,800 of them.
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VIETNAM
Improving the sustainability of vietnam’s textile and apparel industries
We supported a multistakeholder initiative aimed at improving working conditions and environmental standards in Vietnam’s textile and apparel industries. We designed a package of commercially-viable interventions to drive systemic change in the industry towards sustainable textile and apparel production, and brought together stakeholders to launch these initiatives.
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GLOBAL
A global framework for financial health
We analyzed whether a global version of a financial health framework could advance our collective, holistic understanding of consumer behavior and deepen our appreciation for the impact of finance on personal well-being among the poor.
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BANGLADESH
Studying the rice market in Bangladesh
We completed a value chain study of the Bangladeshi rice market for GAIN, with the aim of increasing 55 million households access to nutrient fortified rice. We assessed four nutritious rice concepts and developed a full business case for the most commercially viable intervention.
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KENYA
Studying smallholder farmers’ use of financial services in Kenya
We conducted a benchmark study for Mercy Corps on the use of financial services by smallholder farmers in Kenya who live on under $2.5 a day. The research focused on the pain points that prevent them from achieving financial health, and their current uses and perceptions of technology.
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CHINA
Catalyzing adoption of clean cookstoves in China
Dalberg conducted an in-depth market assessment and developed detailed recommendations to catalyze adoption of clean cookstoves in China. Our work is informed the strategy for the Chinese government’s three-year pilot program that will contribute toward a large scale national stoves program.
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INDIA
Making 5-minute inclusive loans a reality with “India Stack”
We examined how to make 5-minute inclusive loans, whereby a digital lending system can unlock credit for low income customers, a reality in India. The project presented think tank iSPIRT’s “India Stack” as a powerful open digital infrastructure to enable an effective user experience.
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GLOBAL
Small merchants offer big financial inclusion opportunities
We authored a report with the Global Development Incubator – and commissioned by VISA – on how financial service providers can engage micro and small merchants to unlock the social and economic benefits of digital payments.
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SENEGAL
Developing the city of Dakar’s resilience strategy
As a strategy partner to 100 Resilient Cities – Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, we helped the City of Dakar develop its resilience strategy, implementing an inclusive governance strategy to enable the city to better manage future shocks and on-going stresses.
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INDIA
Understanding Indian consumers’ readiness for digital financial services
In partnership with Omidyar Network, we sought to understand the context and behaviors of Indian consumers regarding digital consumption and readiness for digital financial services. We leveraged in-depth interviews with consumers across urban, semi-urban, and rural areas, and human-centered design prototyping sessions, to uncover behavioral insights.
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ASIA, SOUTH-EAST ASIA
The impact investing industry in South Asia
We produced a comprehensive overview of the impact investing industry in South Asia to improve awareness of sector trends, challenges and prospects among key stakeholders including financial institutions, impact enterprises, policymakers and the public.