What We Do
Our Work
ERFIP operates through two connected engines—one that generates knowledge, one that turns it into action.
01 — Think
The Think Tank
Knowledge Hub
Focus: insight generation, strategy, and systems understanding.
Insight-to-Action Capture
Translate learnings into usable frameworks that serve the broader ERFIP community — distilling case studies, convenings, and field research into practical playbooks that partners can act on immediately, rather than reports that sit on a shelf.
Data-Based Validation
Validate learnings through data-based research, testing assumptions against real outcomes in the field so that strategy is grounded in evidence rather than intuition or precedent alone.
Actionable Knowledge for Community Implementation
Disseminate learnings to the ERFIP community based on peer-to-peer review through local and global summits, creating a shared body of knowledge that every member family can draw on when shaping their own giving.
02 — Do
The Do Tank
Convergence Circle
Focus: action, validation, and community-level implementation.
Mapping Opportunity Corridors
Identify where needs and resources intersect to spark transformative partnerships — surfacing the specific regions, sectors, and moments where a modest, well-placed intervention can unlock outsized impact.
Evidence-Based Intelligence
Gather ground-level data and strategic insights to inform high-impact decisions, working directly with local partners who understand the on-the-ground realities that no dashboard can fully capture.
Bridging Strengths
Align actors across sectors to co-design solutions and build supportive ecosystems — bringing philanthropists, businesses, and local institutions to the same table so that no single actor has to carry a solution alone.
Insight becomes action
Together, the Think Tank and Do Tank form a single feedback loop—research that leads to partnership, and partnership that generates new research.
Current Focus
ERFIP’s current focus is on strengthening the knowledge and appetite of local asset owners and philanthropists with catalytical capital opportunities.
We are building a coalition across Africa around climate solutions, pairing investors and businesses on the ground with global capital to back local innovation—local partners bring the trust, context, and on-the-ground judgment; global funders bring scale. Together they can move faster and more efficiently.
Current Focus
Youth & Climate
For frontier markets, a warming planet adds a further layer of complexity to development, straining agricultural systems, stretching water and energy supply, complicating waste management, and threatening the resilience of communities. Yet some of these regions are home to the youngest and largest population, a demographic reality no development strategy can afford to overlook. We choose not to dwell on what climate disruption and artificial intelligence can put at risk, but rather look toward what becomes possible when technology meets purposeful investment. Across frontier markets, a new generation has started to move fluently between climate solutions and technology, developing local knowledge no outside expert can replicate. It is this transition we are striving to enable.