Do you want the businesses you back to become commercially viable?
I do the work that gets them there, and give you the numbers your funder is asking for.
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Aid is becoming investment. Investment expects a return.
the top of the range bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa was projected to fall by in 2025
donor countries with further cuts announced to 2027, together nearly three quarters of all aid
ex-post evaluations among 72 market systems documents reviewed in 2024
Most people in the sector know about the cuts. The part that gets less attention is what happened to the money that stayed. It did not disappear. It got fussier. Fewer deals, each one bigger, and local money matters more than it did five years ago.
That is not a funding problem. It is a commercial one, and commercial problems can be solved.
Funders have started behaving like investors. Programmes are now asked to report investment readiness, commercial finance accessed and capital leveraged — questions about the businesses they work with, not about the intervention. Most only discover they cannot answer them near the end.
Who this is for
Programmes that back private businesses and are judged on whether those businesses last.
You are a team leader, a private sector lead, or a results and evidence manager on a market systems or challenge fund programme. Or you are in a head office, carrying the past performance of a closing programme into the next bid. Or you are the funder, and you wrote the indicators.
Programmes
You choose partners, spend money with them, and have to show what survived.
Implementers
Your next bid rests on what you can evidence from the last one.
Funders
You are asking for investment readiness and leverage, and getting narrative.
What I do
- 1
Designing the intervention
Is there a market for this, and in which months do those customers actually hold cash?
Most interventions are priced and timed on an assumption. I find out what the people you want to reach actually earn and spend across a year — which months they are in surplus, which months they are not, and what they stop buying first when money is short. That tells you what can be sold, at what price, and in which season.
A cash calendar for the target population, a real market size, and the portion of it reachable through the traders and agents already operating.
- 2
Choosing partners
Which businesses can carry this commercially, rather than which ones apply?
Selection usually tests whether a business is willing and whether it is able. Neither of those asks whether the business itself is solvent. I build a financial picture of every candidate from its own records — margin, cash cycle, whether it covers its costs without you — and rank them on that.
Every candidate assessed from its own records, ranked, with selection criteria you can defend to your funder.
- 3
Working with partners
How does this business get to paying its own way?
We work through what the business sells, to whom, at what price and at what cost, until the numbers close. Then we test it on a real paying customer rather than a pilot nobody pays for. Their finance people build the model with me, so it is theirs to run when I go.
A financial model built with the partner, a priced product or service, and a tested route to a real paying customer.
- 4
Taking partners to finance
What does a lender actually need to see?
Businesses that are ready get prepared the way a lender expects — the accounts, the exposure, what the money would do and how it comes back. Then I introduce them to institutions I work with. I do not promise anyone receives finance. That decision belongs to the lender.
An investment case per business, and introductions. The lending decision belongs to the lender.
- 5
Reporting and closing
Can we show what happened, and did it last?
Performance comes from each business's own records rather than from a survey, so what you report is verified rather than claimed. It maps to the indicators already in your logframe, so it goes into your reporting rather than sitting beside it.
Verified performance per business, mapped to the indicators in your logframe.
- 6
After the programme
Does anything continue once you have gone?
The businesses keep reporting for two years after you close. If they stop, that is reported as a finding rather than hidden. It is the only way anyone can say what lasted — across seventy-two market systems documents reviewed in 2024, there were three ex-post evaluations.
The same businesses, the same figures, still reporting for two years after close.
How the work gets done
Five tools do that work. They are how it is done, not what you buy.
Three of these are canvases. Every decision on one page, in order, so you can see the whole picture at once — and see which pieces do not fit.
The other two are instruments rather than canvases. Market Intelligence collects and verifies the numbers from each business. The Trade Liquidity Multiplier structures a reserve so that it unlocks many times its own value in trade credit.
decisions
Grant to Commercial Viability Canvas
How a business a programme backs gets to paying its own way.
things scored
Market Intelligence
Four readiness tiers, from real transaction data.
steps, then a fork
Investment Case Canvas
For anyone who has been turned down without a reason.
decisions, four stages
Intervention Design Canvas
For programme teams designing for life after exit.
ways to build the reserve
Enterprise Trade Liquidity Multiplier
How a ring-fenced reserve unlocks many times its own value in trade credit. Used at moments 1 and 4.
What the work found.
Fifteen engagements. Some of this contradicts what the sector tells itself, and it is written plainly because that is how it turned up.
Training is not transformation
Training alone does not improve produce quality. The market has to reward quality before quality appears. That changes what a capability budget should be buying.
Inclusion without income is still exclusion
A study tracing where the money actually lands in a value chain, and how little of it reaches the people a programme counted as included.
A donor programme that became a business
A regional seed and markets programme moved from donor funded to a private company across three Southern African countries, with clear customers and its own plan.
micro and small enterprises financed in Kano, Nigeria, with repayment sustained above 98%
producers reached against a target of 76,998 (MADE, Nigeria)
net additional income against a £3.1m target (MADE, Nigeria)
private companies partnered, leveraging £500,000+ into the cassava value chain
production growth in leather clusters, Kano
years of work across seven African countries
“I worked with Al-Habib for a few years when he was the Market Systems Adviser for our BIF programme in Nigeria. Al-Habib has extensive market systems expertise and knows Nigeria and the various stakeholders involved in the agricultural supply chains in Nigeria very well. I would highly recommend Al-Habib for any market systems, value chain analysis and economic development programmes across Africa.”
What you will be able to report
- Investment readiness by stage, for each business and across the portfolio.
- Commercial finance accessed and capital leveraged, with amounts and sources.
- Adoption outside your partner set — businesses copying the model without a grant.
- Partner survival and performance at three, six, twelve and twenty-four months after close.
Programmes I have worked on
Corporate finance first. Development second.
That order matters. I came to development from corporate finance, which is why the models I build are meant to be used rather than filed.
My career began in corporate finance in the City of London: HSBC, ABN Amro, Capita.
The steps are the same every time. Assess the businesses. Fix the ones worth fixing. Take the ready ones to finance. Prove what lasted.
Three questions worth answering
- 01Which of your partner businesses are solvent right now?
- 02Which will still be trading two years after you leave?
- 03What would it take to make the rest investable?
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