Our Experience
KDP is a very young company, and as such we have almost no dedicated track record. However, Our Managing Director and our 6 Associate Consultants bring with them many years of international development consultancy experience, most of it focussed on the core areas of KDP’s advertised, specialized capability.
Managing a Thinking and Working Politically Programme for FCDO
Malawi
In 2023, Simon Foot was asked to take over leadership of the programme, providing the opportunity to refine the approach being taken. Supported by Palladium’s flexible approach, Simon led changes including informalising the programme’s work, instigating a media and advocacy strategy aimed at offering decision-makers technically and politically feasible solutions, encouraging local staff to come to the fore with their particular local knowledge, and promoting a culture of constructive self-reflection, the implementation achievements of the programme have markedly improved. Local interests now drive governance and social inclusion achievements but around highly relevant public issues which galvanise wide political support.
Connecting Communities With Forest Product Businesses
Myanmar
In 2008, the only legal means by which local land holders in Kachin State in Myanmar could gain a measure of protection from indiscriminate logging by Myanmar and Chinese companies was through obtaining Community Forestry Certificates (CFCs). Other aid agencies had attempted this before in other parts of the country but without much success, but light touch political economy assessments by FCDO’s project (implemented by the British Council) supported by Simon Foot as PEA advisor on the programme, suggested there might be local political support for the measure, sufficient to ensure that some of the logging companies themselves would be forced to support the community measure. The project worked over the ensuing three years in 120 villages, supporting the establishment of 59 user groups and touching the lives of 60,000 people. And it did achieve significant improvements in community working, replanting and better gender rights. However, the expected political support did not materialise, and only a relatively small number of CFCs were approved. The Programme therefore began looking for alternative means of engaging business interests in the incentives equation. Consultations were held with a variety of forest-product businesses, including rattan, teak and elephant foot yam in Chin State. In mainly hilly areas it was found that traders in these commodities appreciated that community land control could enhance both the quality and supply of the product, and they would therefore lend the weight of their support behind the application process. In this way connecting business traders with communities could tip the balance in favour of forestry protection, livelihoods and inter-ethnic collaboration.
Building on the Politics of Fishing Communities
Myanmar
In 2011, Simon Foot, working as Political Economy Advisor with a TWP FCDO Programme in Myanmar collaborated with a multi-donor livelihoods programme supporting Cyclone Giri recovery (implemented by the British Council). Local power structures, left over from the previous military regime, meant that privileged members of communities were able to gain advantage through land use change permissions so they could expand onshore shrimp farms and bye-pass netting restrictions covering the local creeks. But these promoted damage to riverine fisheries, and so the associated value chain, including transport and sales to Yangon and into Bangladesh (connections that had helped to connect diverse communities together) had started to collapse. The programmes drew on this knowledge to help build an informal coalition of vested interest which began to deliver improvements in regulatory enforcement and fisheries recovery. In many ways though, these gains were lost when inter-ethnic and religious violence erupted in Rakhine a year later and intensified in 2016. Competition over fisheries and loss of value chain connections contributed to ethno-religious conflict deepening.
Countering Substandard and Falsified Drugs
Malawi
A report from late 2022, produced by the Kamuzu University Department of Health Sciences (KUHES), is reputed to have stated that up to 80 percent of drugs in Malawi are substandard or fake. Though the high figure is in dispute, and its results were suppressed, it has been corroborated by a more recent WHO study. Through large parts of Africa and beyond, companies allegedly liaise with Politicians to obtain high profits from the unethical practice. Traction (The FCDO – Palladium programme lead by Simon Foot) initially took a technical stance, promoting a private sector led track and trace system, but perhaps unsurprisingly there as political resistance to adopting such a system. Traction therefore adapted its strategy, seeking to establish stronger connections with and between other interests both in society, and in government. This strategy began to bear fruit, with many actors understandably shocked by the reputed contents of the original report, and they went about verifying the claims with their own investigations, and planning for public exposure of the story. It remains to be seen whether, owing to the issue’s broad and alarming concern to most people across the country (both the poor and the middle classes alike), the issue may become an electoral debate topic, and whether the proffered technical solution might thence be taken up. While the ideal outcome of a reduction in fake drugs is some way off, this Issues Based Project has made good progress in tipping the balance of debate through a broadening of public engagement, and so raising the political prospects for a partial solution.
Understanding and Influencing Informal Networks in Maize Markets
Zambia
The Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) in Zambia, was intended to deliver cheap inputs to poor farmers. However, local political influence over targeting meant that much of the subsidised input was re-directed to party cadres and influencers, and evidence showed that the scheme had no appreciable positive impact on poverty reduction. FCDO’s Zambia Economic Advocacy Programme (implemented by DAI Europe) worked with local think tanks and other interests, including large grain processors and traders, to develop an informal network (coalition) of interest aimed at tipping the balance of power around this issue. This collaboration, driven on the Programme by Guy Lodge (Kivu International and KDP Associate) and Simon Foot, helped the Ministry of Agriculture in 2015 to keep borders open for trade, and to pilot an e-voucher system, measures which together severely curtailed the flow of mis-directed funds. The e-voucher remains today as a key part of the Government’s poverty reduction strategy.
A Mid-term Evaluation of PIPMA Phase IV
Rwanda
KDP undertook a review for Norwegian People’s Aid in Rwanda in 2023. The study required a PEA angle, and this was used to identify challenges and obstacles to achieving the expected level of public participation through the programmes’ activities. However, the study also identified means of helping to make the scorecard system, which was the centrepiece of the programme more engaging with Rwanda’s political realities. In the following year or two, the scorecard was picked up by the Rwandan Government as one of the accepted or promoted means of improving public participation in project selection and potentially for influencing policy in selected areas.