WASHINGTON — Working at the World Bank’s office in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2011, Sachin Gathani did something uncommon. He quit.
The research firm this East African and his co-founder Dimitri Stoelinga, a Greek-Dutchman who grew up in West Africa, left to start is known as Laterite and is currently headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kigali, Rwanda. It’s an example of two trends bubbling up in the global development business today: localization and a focus on results.
The duo had a couple of goals when they hung out their own shingle, Gathani told Devex in an interview. First they wanted to “change the paradigm” away from the “fly-in fly-out” consultants so often used for research projects of the kind World Bank officials typically commission. Second, they wanted high-quality research to come from within the countries where the evidence was needed.