At Salient, we’re passionate about ensuring more outstanding African businesses are engaged to deliver on health and development goals.
We don’t just advise on our clients in this regard, we also source and contract partners across the continent to fulfill our own business needs for designers, trainers, recruiters, and more.
Sharing here some of our nearest and dearest business partners who we highly recommend based on both what they produce and how they work.
Reach out to them for your business needs!
Digital design: Defijn are a South African digital experience and design firm. They did our website for the Investing in Innovation program and support many startups’ UX/UI. Their design work has been excellent, and they’re a pleasure to partner with.
Leadership training: WAOW Project, led Kenza Barrada. Kenza has 18 years of experience training consultants and leaders in Africa, Europe and beyond, across many sectors. Based in Casablanca, Kenza brings a rigorous, heart-centred approach to her clients. Another incredible woman-led firm!
Gender equality in the workplace: While we support women’s leadership in health tech and health systems, we have lots of work to do ourselves to ensure we’re walking the talk. Rhoda Maina reviewed Salient’s internal approach to gender, and helped us develop a more purposeful plan.
Event planning: A leading woman-owned firm operating in Nigeria and across the continent, the Eventful team is highly skilled at bringing people together to build trust, advance progress and have fun. After an effective day of work, they’ll also get everyone dancing.
Public relations: We believe storytelling is one of our most powerful tools to change the world. Our partners at Wimbart help bring our data-driven analyses to life. Wimbart is not based in Africa, however, the woman-owned firm is powered by dynamos of the African diaspora and are the leading communications agency on the African tech scene. They have elevated the reach and impact of our work and the work of innovators across the continent.
Data privacy & protection training: TechHive Advisory provided us training on data privacy and protection across Africa, helping us understand our own responsibilities as a business and the implications for health tech innovations across the continent. Really useful.
As a small business, the impact of our expenditure on creating high-value, high-impact jobs is minimal. But setting expenditure targets across development is a mechanism for meaningful change, on the pathway to localization. Imagine if a few leading donors required large development contracts to expend a minimum of 50% of their funds in the markets they work in? Justin Sandefur’s recent analysis suggests that of the $11.8B dollars the American firms are awarded as primes from USAID between FY 2017-2021, only 1.7B (14%) is passed on as sub-awards to local partners. Increasing this target to 50% would enable billions of dollars to flow to organizations who are creating high-value jobs.
Do you know others we should partner with moving forward?
Let us know!
