Mastering the New Reality: From Polling to Proximity in a Multipolar World

For the last two decades, the playbook for investment, advocacy, and development on the continent has followed a set of predictable rules. Today, that playbook is obsolete.

The world we operate in has fundamentally changed. The challenges are no longer linear, the actors are no longer predictable, and the very concept of “truth” has become a contested landscape. We must be more agile, more innovative, and more radically human-centred than ever before to stay ahead. 

We are navigating a new reality defined by three major shifts.

First, power itself has fragmented. We have moved decisively from a unipolar world to a multipolar one, defined not by cooperation but by strategic competition and accelerating economic decoupling. Simultaneously, power is diffusing away from traditional nation-states. It is now wielded by new actors: mega-corporations with geopolitical influence and sophisticated non-government networks — from activist coalitions to criminal enterprises and conspiracy theorists — that operate beyond borders and challenge state control.

Second, the frontier is now digital. This fragmentation is supercharged by technology, creating a struggle over reality itself. We face the rise of techno-authoritarianism—the use of AI for mass surveillance and narrative control—and the normalisation of synthetic reality, where AI-generated disinformation is deployed daily to destabilise trust. This creates a complex ‘AI vs. AI’ environment, where organisations need sophisticated tools simply to separate fact from fiction.

Third, and most critically for Africa, the audience has changed. Power no longer flows only from the top down. A digitally-native “parallel electorate”—driven by the continent’s massive demographic youth bulge—now exists online. This population mobilises faster than any institution, operates on narratives of inclusion and economic justice, and holds the true license to operate.

This new digital environment creates a critical trap. In a world infatuated with big data, there is an immense risk that those excluded from these massive datasets—the digitally disconnected, the offline, the marginalised—are simply overlooked. Their opinions do not appear in the available data, and so, functionally, they cease to exist to the strategist. In this world, being close to the people is not a platitude; it is the only viable solution to data exclusion. Real proximity is the only antidote to an incomplete picture.

For leaders and organisations, this means the mission has permanently changed. A “Business-to-Government” strategy is now impossible without a “Business-to-Population” strategy. And understanding this new, complex audience requires moving from passive polling to true proximity—going beyond surface opinions to map the deep, systemic drivers of belief and behaviour, especially for those the data obscures.

This volatile, fragmented, and synthetic reality confirms what we’ve long believed: the traditional consulting model is broken. You cannot solve a systemic problem with a siloed service.

This fragmented world doesn’t require a consultant who just built a new tool for this new world. It requires constant innovation, true agility, and an embedded, design-led approach to change. This is where our core DNA—our commitment to designing change with communities, not for them—proves its value. Our CIVocacy approach, for example—moving beyond traditional advocacy to mobilise an entire civic ecosystem to speak for its future—is precisely the kind of systemic, participatory, and human-centred solution demanded by a world where power is diffuse.

This agile philosophy is crystallised in our new operating system for navigating reality. It starts with our proprietary methodology. We must first See the System in its entirety—using predictive data combined with the deep human-centred intelligence that only proximity provides. We Strategise for impact, designing the precise interventions and aligned incentives that can have outsized impact. And we Activate change, driving the rapid adoption and community ownership that turns a new vision into a lasting reality.

We apply this engine to solve systemic failure through three distinct modes of engagement, tailored to where our partners sit within the system. 

We help pioneering organisations Navigate to address policy, market, and narrative barriers to align commercial success with inclusive growth.

We help fragmented stakeholders Mobilise and empower those closest to the issue to become their own most powerful advocates

And we partner with funders to Catalyse external interventions can unleash chain effects for impact. 

Mastering this new environment is the central challenge of our time. It requires a new playbook built on agility and radical human-centricity, not rigid assumptions. We are already deploying this engine to help our partners navigate volatility and solve the systemic challenges that define our future.