Since summer 2020, NIRAS and Agora Global Ltd have been implementing Sida’s Market Systems Development (MSD) Helpdesk. In 2021, CDC joined the pool of senior MSD experts around the world providing technical services to the Helpdesk, which has implemented over 40 short-term assignments ranging from MSD reviews, support to strategy development, portfolio analyses, to workshops, […]

Dr. Chris Coles has launched this personal project as a contribution to low-carbon growth in one of the UK’s most disadvantaged, low-income regions (often hidden to the casual observer by the pockets of wealth in an area of extreme inequalities). Tourism is an important economic driver here, but motorised over-tourism is a seasonal issue in the most […]

Is there really a way to drive economic growth and poverty reduction in a way that is gender equitable, environmentally beneficial (or at least neutral), and socially positive? This was the driving question for a major research programme commissioned by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), implemented by the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and […]

Dr. Chris Coles of Coles Development Consulting Ltd. was the lead author of a published paper on cost effective market estimation in pro-poor value chain development initiatives. This work compares three rapid market estimation techniques using case studies in urban dairy production in two contrasting Tanzanian municipalities and underlines the importance of informal markets for […]

In August 2017, The World Bank issued its first Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) on the Seychelles, Africa’s only high-income economy. Its findings will inform the Bank’s operational work in the country and contribute to its public debate on the new, national development planning process. The Seychelles SCD identifies the most pressing constraints to inclusive, sustained […]