Our Projects
We’ve helped governments, foundations and organisations around the world deliver equitable and sustainable digital solutions to their development challenges. Here are some of the projects we’ve worked on.
Strive Community
Small businesses are engines of economic growth and the key to an inclusive recovery. Yet many are struggling to adapt to rapid digital transformation in the wake of the pandemic. Strive Community, a global initiative launched by Caribou Digital and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, will equip five million small business owners with innovative digital solutions that unleash their potential as catalysts of inclusive growth.
Platform Livelihoods
By supporting digital marketplaces, search and advertising, and even social media, digital platforms are changing how individuals around the world find and do work, and how small enterprises and farmers connect with markets. What are the experiences of individual workers and sellers as their livelihoods change? And what are the implications for digital development? Check out this project site for an in-depth look at platform livelihoods.
Skills for a Digital Age
Skills are a core component of the future of work all over the world. Especially in emerging markets. This project explores how societies can adjust to equip workers with the skills they need to access meaningful work. We do not focus on “digital skills”, but rather, on the skills required for a digital age. This project highlights the roles and opportunities for development organizations, companies, and third party training institutions.
The Mastercard Foundation’s FIDA Partnership
FIDA Partnership works to promote meaningful financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa by synthesizing knowledge across the digital finance sector, conducting research and identifying how it affects the diverse stakeholders in this space.
Digital after COVID-19
Digital after COVID-19 explores how the path towards digitization can be shifted during this time of change. We are tracking the actions that organisations and companies are taking right now, recognizing this as a critical moment where small changes in policy and product can result in big shifts towards a more fair and inclusive digital future. Each post we curate is another action – another important ‘response to the response’.
Identity in a Digital Age
Digital identification systems play a critical role in the development of ethical, sustainable digital economies and societies. Caribou Digital has developed a holistic, multi-level perspective on such systems, joining contextual insights on user practices, an understanding of business models and technical innovation, and an awareness of changing country-level policy landscapes. Where others may focus on discrete identification systems, this perspective helps us see how complex, thriving national and regional identification ecosystems can be made more inclusive and effective, while protecting and promoting an individual’s agency, dignity, and privacy. We have worked on research for clients such as the Omidyar Network, DFID, World Bank, Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade and UNICEF. Our research has taken us to users in countries such as India, Lebanon, Côte d’Ivoire, Jordan, Uganda and Brazil.
Explore some of our Identities work below:
Our Businesses
While Caribou Digital works chiefly as an advisory firm and research consultancy across the broad realm of digital development, we have developed specialised stand alone businesses to focus on areas we think are important:
Caribou Data
Caribou Data offers a new way to look at the nuance and complexity of how people engage with digital products and services in day-to-day life. Using anonymous, device-level data, we help our clients to better understand how the consumers they care about get online, communicate, use apps, consume content, make financial transactions, and more.
DFS Lab
Traditional banking models have failed the two billion people still without access to financial services, but in a world where mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous and internet connectivity is rapidly spreading, there is an unprecedented opportunity to provide everyone with honest and affordable financial services. DFS Lab accelerates fintech innovation in emerging markets. Once we find a team of entrepreneurs with an idea we believe in, we back them with the funding, mentorship, and expertise they need to thrive.
Caribou Space
We’re supporting the UK Space Agency’s multi-million pound, five-year ODA initiative, the International Partnership Programme. Now with 30 projects across 35 countries, the programme demonstrates the vital role the space sector plays in improving lives across developing countries.
We also support European Space Agency’s Earth Observation for Sustainable Development programme to bring satellite technology into global development aid operations.
Caribou Digital Investments
Caribou Digital Investments is our own venture and advisory company, providing capital and other support to early stage digital companies in emerging markets. We founded CDI to invest in early stage digital technology companies that improve agency, dignity, prosperity, inclusiveness and well-being in emerging markets. Through CDI we also build and invest in companies, like Caribou Data, when we identify opportunities to leverage Caribou Digital’s unique expertise in emerging market digital economies.