Innovation Studio
The Studio is our experimental lab where insights become action. Drawing from fieldwork and analysis through our reports, we launch projects that test new ideas, address gaps, and empower local innovation ecosystems across emerging economies.
We work on ventures that sit at the intersection of policy, technology, and inclusive development — from digital infrastructure to civic innovation. You will find below our current initiatives.
The Problem
Innovative projects in emerging markets often struggle to access the funding they need to grow. Traditional investment avenues are typically geared towards established markets, leaving a significant gap in support for early-stage ventures in regions like East Africa. Additionally, local savings are underutilized, and there’s a heavy reliance on foreign investments, which can lead to a disconnection between investors and the communities they aim to support.
The solution we're building
D-Fund is a platform designed to democratize investment in emerging markets by mobilizing local savings to finance the economy of tomorrow. The goal is to reduce reliance on foreign investments and avoid the traditional North-South divide. Key aspects of the solution include tokenized equity shares, making it easier and more secure for individuals to invest. This encourages local investors to support organizations from the private sector, selected on impact and innovation criteria.
With a focus on the Great Lake Region, d-Fund aims to identify and fund promising projects that can drive economic and social growth, while lowering barriers to entry for individual local investors. ecosystem, D-Fund seeks to empower both investors and entrepreneurs, driving sustainable development from within the communities themselves.
The Problem
In many emerging markets, especially across Africa, critical data needed for informed decision-making is either lacking, inaccessible, or outdated. This data scarcity hampers the ability of communities, NGOs, and governments to address pressing issues effectively. Traditional data collection methods are often resource-intensive and fail to engage local communities, leading to solutions that don’t fully address on-the-ground realities.
The solution we're building
d-node is an initiative aimed at creating open-source data projects in emerging markets, replacing assumptions with hard evidence. We empower impactful projects with technical expertise and funding, delivering crucial data to communities where it makes the most impact.
By focusing on transparency and community engagement, d-node aims to build a robust data ecosystem that supports sustainable development and informed decision-making in underserved regions. Started in Ghana, we’ve been funding two projects under our model, and worked on several data reuse cases. Currently, the team is focusing their efforts on building a data commons library where social and environmental data from NGOs will be reused for research, visualisation and other projects purposes.