A deal closes when the money moves, but the return and impact are earned in the years that follow. Our Implementation & Value Creation practice is the after-the-deal work: turning a financed company, fund, or programme into one that performs against its plan and grows beyond it. We work alongside investment teams, sponsor groups, and management to sharpen implementation strategy, the commercial case, lift operational performance, build the monitoring systems that catch problems early, and evidence the financial and development results that investors, sponsors and development partners expect. When a program drifts off course, we are on the ground to help.
We bring an owner's perspective rather than an observer's. Our team has sat inside the institutions that finance these programs and have worked alongside business leaders that drive Africa’s growth story. We bring additional experience from investment banking and top-tier management consulting firms. That combination of investment know-how, commercial awareness, and problem-solving mindset matters after the deal, because creating value in African and emerging markets is rarely about financial engineering. It is about disciplined unit economics, the boldness to challenge assumptions, a bias for impact, strong governance, and management teams equipped to execute.
How we work
For DFI-funded projects, we provide implementation support to achieve development results, help manage risks, and increase institutional development. Major programs often entail the set-up of new operating entities, delivery of technical assistance, commercialization of built infrastructure, development of value chains and partnerships, capacity building for project implementation units, and downstream resource mobilization. We also conduct data-driven reviews, surveys, and evaluations of programs and projects either mid-way or end-line, and prepare recommendations on improvements, course correction, and new opportunities. For private sector investments, we start from the investment thesis and the value-creation plan, then make it operational. Working hand in hand with management and the deal team, we translate the plan into a small number of priorities: pricing and commercial strategy, cost and margin discipline, capital allocation, and the data and reporting that let everyone see performance honestly. We instrument the asset with monitoring frameworks aligned to recognised standards so results are comparable and board-ready, we benchmark progress against the original case, and we intervene early when an investment underperforms. Throughout, we transfer capability to the company's own people, because value that depends on outside advisers is value that leaves when we do.
- Portfolio Value Creation
- Implementation Strategy
- Portfolio Monitoring
- Results and Impact Evaluation
Creating value after the deal
Capital does not create value at close, it creates value afterward. We work the portfolio to step value up, from delivery and commercial strategy through monitoring, results, and exit.
What is shaping Implementation & Value Creation
Returns now come from operations, not financial engineering
With multiple expansion off the table and exit windows tight, African private capital returns increasingly depend on real earnings growth and operational improvement rather than leverage or re-rating, and DFIs still anchor roughly two-thirds of market commitments.
Sponsors and investors need hands-on value-creation capability inside portfolio companies, on pricing, margins, and governance, to defend and grow value through to exit, not just at entry.
The mandate has shifted from growth-at-all-costs to profitable scaling
In a tighter capital environment, investors are prioritising positive unit economics and burn-rate discipline over headline growth; some African fintechs spend up to 20 dollars to acquire a customer who returns only 7 dollars, and 2024 saw M&A-driven consolidation toward larger, profitable entities.
Portfolio companies need a credible path to profitability and commercial discipline embedded post-investment, and investors must actively foster synergies across their portfolios rather than fund parallel cash burn.
Impact measurement is consolidating around shared standards
Harmonised Indicators for Private Sector Operations and the EDFI-GIIN Joint Impact Indicators now provide a common results vocabulary across jobs, gender, and climate for a DFI private-sector portfolio of around 300 billion dollars, reducing reporting burden and improving comparability.
Monitoring and evaluation built to these standards from day one makes portfolio results board-ready and comparable across co-investors, turning impact reporting from a compliance task into a capital-raising and accountability asset.
Our value-creation and implementation work runs from commercial diligence through post-investment value creation. For a private-equity firm acquiring a major African fintech platform, we led the commercial due diligence and then supported the post-acquisition transformation aimed at a 5x valuation multiple, the kind of operational, after-the-deal work this practice supports. We have also strengthened operationalization of leading investment compacts on the continents, including in energy, access to finance, agriculture, and the digital economy. On an Africa-wide food and agriculture initiative, for example, we architected the private-sector strategy that helped to build a 3 billion dollar pipeline across 12 countries. On another, we are supporting an international financial institution to map, engage, and empower agtechs and enable partnerships with local banks in a model that aggregates financing to SMEs and smallholder farmers. Yet on another, we are helping the various governments identify, prepare, and structure specific investments to feed the pipelines of their compacts, enabling partnerships with DFIs, private sector investors, and local sponsors.
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