Organisation
How we are organised
One executive accountable for the firm, three business lines, and a compliance function that answers to the board rather than to the people whose work it checks.
The lines
Three businesses, one firm
They share a balance sheet, a field network and a set of standards. They do not share an assignment team where a commodity is common to both.
Advisory & Programmes
Studies, programme design, feasibility and appraisal, evaluation, and delivery under contract to governments, project management units and international partners. Staffed by a named technical lead and a retained panel of specialists on every assignment.
Trade & Commodities
Sourcing, aggregation, quality management, storage and buyer linkage. This is the business that gives the advisory work its prices, its logistics costs and its farm gate reality, and it is also the reason we publish a firewall.
Infrastructure & Agritech
Post-harvest and processing works, water and irrigation, and the appropriate technology that sits between a farm and a market. Delivered with supervised contractors under our own works supervision.
Accountability
Four things the chart is actually saying
- One person can bind the firm. The Managing Director signs proposals, consortium agreements and contracts. There is no committee to hide behind and no ambiguity about who a client is contracting with.
- Compliance does not report to the executive it checks. Legal, Compliance and Data Protection answers to the board. It holds our register of commercial interests, our procurement standing in each country, and our obligations to farmers under the Data Protection Act 2019.
- We declare the conflict before we name the team. Every opportunity passes a conflict check before an assignment team exists. Where we would advise on a commodity we also trade, that interest is declared in the proposal, or we do not bid.
- Nobody reviews their own work. Every deliverable is read before it leaves the firm by a director who is not on that assignment. It is a rotating duty, not a job title.
Capacity
How a small senior team delivers a long programme
Assignments are staffed from a retained panel of specialists rather than a payroll: agronomy and value chains, agricultural economics, monitoring and evaluation, gender and inclusion, irrigation engineering, food safety, institutional and policy analysis.
Panel members are named individually in every proposal, with their curricula vitae attached and their availability confirmed before submission. We do not present retained specialists as staff, and we do not put a name in a proposal that will not be on the assignment. The people accountable for the work are listed on Who We Are.
Commissioning work in East African agriculture?
Tell us what you are procuring and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right firm for it, and who would lead it.