Productivity
Enabling productive participation in the economy by removing constraints and creating jobs. We build capability, enable participation, and create demand through Pharo Ventures.
Plumbing students at the Pharo Vocational Training Centre, Somaliland.
Jobs, value creation, and investable operating models.
Productivity is how communities move from vulnerability to self-reliance, and it is where our private-sector approach is most visible.
African economies face a dual challenge: high unemployment alongside low productivity. Even where jobs exist, frictions such as skills mismatches, limited finance and health constraints reduce output. We work the whole labour market, not isolated barriers.
Our approach has three interconnected levers. We build capability through skills and health. We enable participation by improving access to finance, inputs and markets. And we create demand through Pharo Ventures, which generate the jobs into which workers can integrate.
High unemployment sits alongside low productivity.
In urban areas, limited salaried jobs push young people into informal work, unemployment or migration. In rural areas, remoteness compounds poor access to healthcare, inputs, finance and markets. Broader factors, including gender norms, further restrict participation.
With Africa set to account for nearly half of the world’s new labour-force entrants by 2050, productivity cannot be improved by addressing barriers in isolation. It requires strengthening the full functioning of the labour market.
Our response
Three levers working together: build capability through health and skills, enable participation, and create demand through commercial ventures that keep value local.
Pharo Health
Diagnostic and clinical services in Assosa, addressing the health constraints that limit workforce participation.
NCD programme
Non-communicable disease screening and care, transitioning to Hargeisa General Hospital.
Vocational Training Centre
Technical and vocational training with direct job linkages to the construction sector.
Pharo Ventures
For-profit businesses that create jobs and reinvest: edible oil, Ken Tuna, concrete and more.
Nairobi Art School
Unlocking opportunity in the creative economy; in pre-launch development.
Kigali Venture Studio
Building founder-led, real-economy ventures, starting with agriculture.
Our impact
2025 results, reported in the annual report.
What we learnt
Ventures are hard, and worth it.
They require strong management, disciplined capital allocation and relentless execution. But when they work, they create a durable engine for both impact and independence.
Health is a productivity lever.
Non-communicable diseases are an under-addressed constraint on workforce participation. Our diagnostic work in Assosa and Hargeisa revealed substantial unmet need, with nearly a third of NCD patients newly diagnosed.
Proximity makes the model work.
Capability, access and enterprise are most effective when embedded close to one another, so that skills meet real economic opportunities.
Know when to stop.
Some initiatives do not work out. We judge each honestly, persist where the case holds, and exit when it does not, rather than letting sunk cost decide.
Invest, partner, or build with Pharo Ventures.
For family offices, philanthropists and foundations exploring operator-led capital deployment.