Program Summary

This program focuses on the processing of economic knowledge, targeted dissemination of this information, and creation of specialist products and services. For a few years, the Gorée Institute has been receiving more and more requests (mostly from businessmen and potential investors with little knowledge of West Africa), to facilitate access to a certain type of information, often economic, but whose “formatting” does not necessarily correspond to the traditional canons of information processing.
From experience, we have also noted that these needs could include policy analysis, briefings on the cultural aspects, on the security situation, the quality of business environment, etc.

On the other hand, it is a given that the capacity of African civil society organizations to play a decisive role in public policies is often reduced by the ostracism of governments but also by the lack of knowledge by these organizations of economic and financial matters and the unavailability of information tailored to their needs.

Our Focus

For a first experience in an innovative and not so well defined field, our goal would be to make our offer known, in each of the countries targeted, among a targeted group of businessmen and civil society organizations.

We will focus on developing a more sophisticated knowledge of the West African economic environment through a more holistic approach; that will include better cultural knowledge, better assessment of political and security risks and a stronger command of public budget issues and processes. Our aim will be to improve our ability to identify and contact business people, experts and other specialists to whom such a service will be useful.

Our Approach

Given the novelty of this offer, one of the major challenges consists in a better conceptualization:

• Create the conditions for a better sharing of ideas through the organization of concept ownership meetings
• More accurate assessment of the scope and structuring of the requests for economic knowledge
• Establish the product and service development process
• Assess proposed products and services
• Create a first service and product delivery project including pricing (for some products and services)