Professional Development What Is DEI Training and What Does It Need to Look Like in Gulf and African Organisations? Standard DEI training was designed for organisations in North America and Europe trying to increase representation of underrepresented groups. Gulf and African organisations need something significantly different because their diversity challenge is different. DEI training diversity,…
Professional Development The Impact of Continuous Learning on Organisational Growth: What the Evidence Shows The connection between organisational learning investment and performance outcomes is real and reasonably well evidenced. What matters is understanding which learning investments produce which outcomes not all L&D spending is equivalent. The case for organisational investment in continuous learning is well…
Youth Development How Sports Influence Youth Development and Social Skills: What the Evidence Actually Shows Sport is widely assumed to develop character, teamwork and social skills in young people. The evidence is more conditional than this. Sport produces these outcomes under specific conditions and fails to under others. The belief that sport builds character and…
Women in Leadership Women in Ghana’s Public Sector: The Data, the Progress and the Remaining Gaps Ghana has made notable progress on women’s representation in public sector roles over the past two decades. The gaps that remain are structural, well-documented and addressable with deliberate policy and development investment. Ghana’s public sector employs a significant proportion…
Professional Development Cross-Cultural Communication for Expatriate Managers in Dubai and the Gulf: What Actually Helps Dubai’s workforce is one of the most nationally diverse in the world. Managing effectively in this environment requires specific skills that most cross-cultural communication training does not provide because it was not designed for this context. Dubai’s professional environment is…
Youth Development Youth Empowerment Frameworks: What Works, What Does Not, and What Gulf and African Contexts Require Youth empowerment is one of the most widely used terms in international development and youth policy. It is also one of the most inconsistently defined, which makes evaluating what it produces very difficult. Here is what the evidence…
Kenya and Nigeria together account for over 300 million people, a significant proportion of whom are under 25. Both countries have young, fast-growing, urbanising populations with high levels of digital connectivity, entrepreneurial energy, and growing but insufficient formal employment. Both are also contexts where youth development practitioners, NGOs, government agencies, and international donors are investing…
The GCC training market has grown significantly over the past decade. There are now hundreds of providers operating across the region, from global brands with local offices to regional specialists, from accredited institutions to pop-up training companies that appeared six months ago. For L&D and HR managers responsible for staff development budgets, choosing the right…
The narrative around women in leadership in the GCC has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, the UAE’s Gender Balance Council, Qatar’s national development framework, and similar initiatives across the region have produced real, measurable changes in the policy environment. Women are entering the workforce in greater numbers than at any…
Every year, millions of dollars flow into youth programmes across the GCC and Africa. Some of those programmes change young people’s lives. Many do not. The difference rarely comes down to good intentions, funding levels, or even the quality of the facilitators. It comes down to design. A well-designed youth programme has a clear theory…
