Passerelle Consulting — Strategy, Sustainability and Impact

Donors, companies and investors make decisions differently. Few advisers understand all three. We work at their intersection.

Passerelle advises organizations where public funding, private operations and investment capital have to work together. We support strategy, program design and recovery, responsible business, and impact, in French and English, grounded in direct experience across Africa and international institutions.

Three worlds that often speak past each other

Companies, public institutions, and investors often face the same fundamental questions: where to focus, how to allocate resources, and how to turn strategy into results.

But each operates with a different language, a different standard of proof, and a different definition of success.

Strategy firms know how to advise executive teams. Development firms know how to navigate funder requirements. Investors focus on risk, return, and capital allocation.

Passerelle works across all three.

Our founder has spent more than a decade at their intersection: in strategy consulting at Dalberg, managing an EU-funded multi-country program at the International Labour Organization, and co-founding an investment fund in Dakar.

That means we understand not only how to design a strategy, but also how to make it credible to funders, workable for teams, and defensible to investors.

What a decision taken too late costs

Strategic problems rarely become critical overnight. They emerge when decisions, resources and execution fall out of alignment. Here are three situations we encounter regularly.

The strategy exists, but it no longer drives decisions

The plan is there. Yet annual priorities, budgets and projects keep shifting with urgencies, funding opportunities and external requests.

What it ends up costing.

Scattered resources. Teams constantly re-prioritizing. Initiatives accumulating without a shared logic. And leadership losing a clear line of sight on what the organization is choosing to do, and why.

What we do.

Rebuild a clear decision chain between ambition, priorities, operating model, resources and results.

The risk is identified, but nobody has translated it into decisions

A regulatory, monetary, geopolitical or market shift is known. It comes up in leadership discussions, but its concrete implications for the business have never been modelled.

What it ends up costing.

Decisions taken under pressure. Avoidable exposure across cash flow, supply chains and investments. Mitigation options that become more expensive and more limited as time passes.

What we do.

Turn uncertainty into scenarios, quantify exposure, make the trade-offs explicit, and prepare decisions before the risk becomes a crisis.

The resources exist, but the mechanism to mobilize them does not

Capital is available. Partners are interested. The capabilities exist. Yet resources are not reaching the priorities where they could create the most value.

What it ends up costing.

Missed growth and investment opportunities. Underfunded programs. Businesses that remain undercapitalized. Resources that exist but generate less value or impact than they could.

What we do.

Design the missing mechanism: funding models, governance structures, allocation criteria, partnership architecture.

The four practices

Strategy and growth

Corporate strategy, market entry, operating models and organizational effectiveness. Helping leadership decide where to play, how to win, and how to organize for execution.

Program design and delivery

Design a program that wins its funding, then make it survive contact with reality.

Sustainability and responsible business

Responsible sourcing, human rights due diligence, ESG reporting and supply-chain risk. What regulators, customers, investors and business partners require today, or soon will.

Impact and capital mobilization

Impact strategy, investment readiness, funding models and capital mobilization. We help organizations build the case, evidence and structure required to attract funding and direct it toward measurable results.

Underneath all four: Analysis and evidence. Data, evaluation and measurement underpin every practice. This analytical rigor is what allows our recommendations to stand up to scrutiny from executive teams, funders, investors and auditors.

Who we work for

Our four practices serve organizations facing complex strategic, operational and impact questions. Some clients come to us to define or refresh a strategy. Others need to design a program, enter a new market, strengthen impact, mobilize capital, or get delivery back on track.

Who we serve

Startups, companies and regional groups International organizations Foundations and NGOs Public institutions Investment funds and development finance institutions

Where we know the terrain

Manufacturing and global supply chains Agriculture, agrifood and fisheries Energy and extractives Financial services Education and workforce development

What issues we understand deeply

Decent work and labor rights Gender equality and women's economic empowerment Youth employment Entrepreneurship and SME development Financial inclusion Health Skills and workforce development Formalization and the informal economy Social dialogue and governance Just transition and the future of work

Reference engagements

International Labour Organization and European Union

€1.4M program across five countries and five value chains, launched as the pandemic disrupted global supply chains.

Managed a multi-country program spanning research and analysis, practical tools, training, and support to governments, employers and workers. In Madagascar and Viet Nam, led work from sector analysis through nationally validated studies, capacity building and practical measures taken forward by local actors.

Result.Research translated into action across two major supply chains, with published evidence, national validation and practical tools adopted or used by ILO constituents.

Textile and clothing supply chain, Madagascar

A major export industry supporting close to 180,000 jobs, but with no chain-wide evidence on working conditions.

Led a baseline study of decent work conditions from cotton to garment production, covering formal and informal activity across the supply chain and documenting wages, employment relationships, informality, discrimination, violence and harassment.

Result.Findings presented publicly, covered by national media and incorporated into the first ILO Business Forum on decent work in Madagascar, held under the high patronage of the Prime Minister.

Future of work, published sector research

Five global industries facing the same structural forces: automation, value chain reconfiguration, demographic change and the climate transition.

Authored the ILO's 2024 report on the future of work in the electronics industry, authored Chapter 2 of its report on the future of work in the oil and gas industry, and contributed to related research on automotive, textiles and aquaculture. The electronics report was subsequently translated into Vietnamese for national use.

Result.Published sector evidence supporting governments, employers and workers in anticipating changes in jobs, skills and global value chains.

WIC Senegal, Dakar

Capital existed, but it was not reaching women-led businesses at the scale required.

Helped build WIC Senegal and its investor base, designed the investment approach and selection criteria, and contributed to mobilizing $2M. The work addressed a structural gap between available private capital and women-led businesses underserved by traditional financing mechanisms.

Result.The model laid the foundations for the first investment fund dedicated exclusively to women-led businesses in Francophone West Africa.

ARED, Dakar

A 30-year organization in bilingual education entering a new strategic cycle, with a need to connect long-term priorities more clearly to implementation, measurement and funding resilience.

Evaluated the previous strategy and led the development of the 2026 to 2030 strategic plan, including a revised theory of change, results chains and indicators, governance and monitoring arrangements, partnership architecture and funding concept notes.

Result.A five-year strategy organized around four priorities, with clearer links between strategic direction, delivery and measurement, and a dedicated resource diversification track supported by funding concepts for future partners.

Ignite.E / Haskè Group, Dakar

A group bringing together advisory, entrepreneurship support and investment, with an opportunity to strengthen how the three entities connect around a shared long-term ambition.

Led the development of a 2030 theory of change and strategic diagnostic, bringing the three entities together around a shared intervention logic and common measures of progress.

Result.A common strategic framework validated across the group, with clearer links between the three entities and a stronger basis for collaboration and collective impact.

Four steps, built on your reality

Frame

Clarify the real question behind the brief. Stakeholders, constraints, decision criteria and definition of success.

Analyze

Build the evidence base before recommending a course of action. Data, interviews, fieldwork and analysis, focused on what the decision actually requires.

Design

Turn the evidence into a practical recommendation. Make the choices, trade-offs, costs and implications of each option explicit.

Embed

Stay close through implementation. Help teams adopt the tools, decisions and ways of working developed together, so the work holds after the engagement ends.

An unusual profile, by design

We work across three different decision environments.

Companies, international institutions and investors operate with different incentives, standards of evidence and definitions of success. Our experience spans all three.

Bilingual at executive level.

Strategy, analysis and recommendations developed directly in English or French, with the same standard of precision in either language.

Senior-led by design.

The person leading the engagement also leads the analysis and delivery. Clients do not move from a senior pitch team to a junior delivery team.

Field and institutional experience.

Ten years across Dakar, Geneva and international consulting from the United States. We understand both what institutions require and what organizations can realistically implement.

Evidence before opinion.

Training in finance, economics and data analytics brings quantitative discipline to the work. Recommendations are grounded in evidence, not assertion.

Donors, companies and investors make decisions differently. Few advisers understand all three. We work at their intersection.

Three worlds that often speak past each other

What a decision taken too late costs

The strategy exists, but it no longer drives decisions

The risk is identified, but nobody has translated it into decisions

The resources exist, but the mechanism to mobilize them does not

The four practices

Strategy and growth

Program design and delivery

Sustainability and responsible business

Impact and capital mobilization

Who we work for

Who we serve

Where we know the terrain

What issues we understand deeply

Reference engagements

International Labour Organization and European Union

Textile and clothing supply chain, Madagascar

Future of work, published sector research

WIC Senegal, Dakar

ARED, Dakar

Ignite.E / Haskè Group, Dakar

Four steps, built on your reality

Frame

Analyze

Design

Embed

An unusual profile, by design

We work across three different decision environments.

Bilingual at executive level.

Senior-led by design.

Field and institutional experience.

Evidence before opinion.

Let us talk about your problem, not our offer