Let's get digital

If your Internet has ever gone down for an afternoon, you know what it’s like to go without adorable cat videos for a few hours. You also know what it’s like to miss a vital e-mail, never receive basic information about a project, or not be able to respond to a client. Without the Internet, life can be frustrating – but doing business in the global economy is nearly impossible.

Nowhere is this challenge starker than on the African continent. In most sub-Saharan African countries, less than 10% of the population has access to the Internet, representing a major barrier to African competitiveness and entrepreneurship. Building robust information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure is critical to unlocking the region’s tremendous economic potential.

Enter the United States Trade and Development Agency – or USTDA, for short. Avid Simon Says readers will recall that USTDA was a client of ours in the past. But for the rest of you, here’s a refresher: USTDA creates markets for American exports by investing in projects in emerging economies. The agency generates $85 of US exports for every dollar it programs – a real return on investment for the American taxpayer.

In sub-Saharan Africa, USTDA is catalyzing investment in the ICT sector. The agency plays a key role in the Global Connect Initiative, a comprehensive interagency effort to connect 1.5 billion people to the Internet by the end of the decade. And USTDA invested in the early stages of the SEACOM undersea fiber-optic cable system, a reliable, high-speed network that now connects African markets with one another and with Europe and Asia. By investing in feasibility studies, technical assistance projects, and other planning activities, USTDA is helping to create sub-Saharan Africa’s networked future.

Before committing funds to any activity, USTDA must conduct a rigorous analysis according to a set of established criteria. That’s where we come in. USTDA recently awarded Simon Everett a prime contract to conduct those independent analyses. We’ll be advising USTDA on whether a project would be successful – and how its odds of success could be improved.

Over the course of the next two years, we'll work on assessing as many as 18 potential activities across the continent - from broadband initiatives to smart city projects. And if that means more cat videos will bounce from Burkina from Botswana, we'll know we've done our job right.

Channeling our efforts

We’re often asked what “analytic design” is. Simply put, it’s the combined application of analytic skills, tailored methodologies, and thoughtful design – both in terms of a project’s structure and its outputs. We’re pretty agnostic about the subject matter of our projects, as long as our team — including our network of consultants — has the necessary expertise to address the issue at hand. This allows us to tackle a wide range of challenges that have one aspect in common: they require us to assess, distill, and interpret information, and produce insights to help clients make informed decisions and improve outcomes. That said, it’s always fun when we’re given the chance to go back to our roots – Middle East affairs and the Arabic language – and apply our skills and knowledge in new and creative ways. Case in point: our recently completed 10-month effort supporting the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is an independent U.S. federal agency whose mission is to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” BBG oversees multiple media outlets that combine to attract more than 226 million audience members each week. Even if you haven’t heard of BBG, you know their networks — including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Our effort supported the BBG’s Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). On behalf of MBN, we assessed the online Arabic-language content of nearly 600 news programs across 30 television channels to characterize their approach to topics relevant to BBG’s mission. By analyzing the subject matter, discourse, format, setting, objectivity, and production quality of individual episodes, we identified trends and gaps that informed MBN’s continued efforts to “expand the spectrum of ideas, opinions, and perspectives available in the region’s media.”

This project enabled us to use our foreign language expertise not for translation purposes, but to assess discussion of political, social, religious, and security issues. We created a custom framework for comparing media content and production across a large set of channels, programs, and episodes. And we provided MBN with concise findings and recommendations that can advance its mission. All in all, we enjoyed the opportunity to support a client that truly makes a difference on the global stage.   

Upgrading our trial account (aka welcome aboard, Vineet!)

Working with a company on a per-project basis is a great way to demonstrate that you have the talent and cultural compatibility that warrant full-time employment. So when we recently advertised an opening for the position of Research Analyst, our former consultant Vineet Surapaneni seized the opportunity to cement his role with us and submitted his application. As a consultant, Vineet had already impressed us with his drive, demeanor, and discipline. But in a crowd of 350 outstanding applicants, Vineet further distinguished himself throughout the course of a rigorous interview process to earn the position.

Vineet’s employment comes on the heels of our support to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a project on which he served as the lead analyst. In that role, he analyzed content produced by 30 Arabic-language news channels to help define the client’s value proposition in the Middle East media market and identify opportunities for differentiation. During that time, Vineet also completed a research internship at the Institute for the Study of War, where he contributed to the think tank’s analysis of rapidly changing battlefield dynamics in Syria.

A (triple!) graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in Economics, Political Science, and Arabic Language and Literature, Vineet was awarded a competitive fellowship by the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), administered by Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

We’re excited to have Vineet join our team, where he’ll provide research, analysis, business development, and administrative support to internal and client-facing initiatives. Welcome (officially) to the family, Vineet!