DAI Joins Forces with Nigeria’s GRID Consulting

February 05, 2018

Bethesda, Md.—DAI and GRID Consulting today announced that GRID, Nigeria’s leading development consultancy, will join the DAI organization effective immediately. A long-time partner of DAI’s, Lagos-based GRID specializes in financial advisory services, human resource management, and development program implementation.

“We are delighted to cement and extend a collaboration that goes back two decades,” said DAI’s Nigeria Country Director Joe Abah, who will lead the newly integrated team. “This investment in Nigeria reflects DAI’s commitment to the country and the region, and significantly enhances our ability to serve clients interested in promoting social and economic development, be they international donors, state and federal governments, or private companies investing in sustainable business.”

Operationally speaking, the combined entity—complementing DAI’s global resources with GRID’s deep-rooted networks, local insights, and track record of delivery in Nigeria—will be able to more efficiently serve a growing, technically diverse, multiclient portfolio in Nigeria, and to reinvest operational savings in program work and the platform that supports it.

From this integrated platform, supported henceforth by GRID’s team in country, DAI will be better able to recruit, retain, support, and ensure the security of the people who deliver our work in Nigeria, in full compliance with local laws and regulations and with DAI’s global standards. And as we absorb and apply the lessons of our work across clients and sectors, we intend to develop this platform as a resource to our partners, customers, and beneficiaries beyond any specific project—thereby honing our collective ability to deliver development results.

“Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy, a country of almost unimaginable promise,” said GRID Managing Director Ike Osakwe. “But like many emerging nations we face the development challenges that come with industrialization and growth, urbanization and technological change—compounded by problems such as poverty, terrorism, and corruption.”

“As development professionals, we see in Nigeria a fertile opportunity to make an enormous difference in people’s lives,” he added. “We are better placed to seize that opportunity as a member of the DAI family.”

The DFID-funded SPARC project, on which DAI and GRID collaborated, raised awareness in Nigeria about how improving governance can directly benefit the public, such as by improving health care, for example.

DAI has a history of work in Nigeria going back to the 1970s, and is currently implementing half a dozen major projects for clients including the U.K. Department for International Development, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Chevron-funded Partnership Initiatives for the Niger Delta. The projects are coordinating water, sanitation, and hygiene initiatives; empowering women to serve as nurses and midwives in Northern Nigeria; promoting more accountable, responsive, and capable state and federal governments, and building the government’s capacity to develop pro-poor public policy; and boosting incomes through investment and market systems in the Niger Delta.

GRID is a partner in most of these initiatives, and all of GRID’s active projects will remain in place, as will existing reporting relationships and points of contact for clients. “Because GRID staff are intimately familiar with DAI’s operations, we anticipate a seamless transition,” said Judith Ogedegbe, GRID’s Executive Director and a human resources management specialist. “We all look forward to exploring the learning and professional development opportunities that come with joining a truly global team.”

About GRID Consulting

Established in 1986, GRID Consulting has focused for more than 20 years on promoting social and economic development in Nigeria and across Africa. Working with private corporations, national governments, international development agencies, academic institutions, and civil society, GRID has built a reputation for trustworthy stewardship of customer and taxpayer funds and a broad portfolio that now includes more than 800 assignments in Nigeria and beyond.

About DAI

Founded in 1970, DAI is a global development company with corporate offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Named one of the world’s top 40 international development innovators, DAI works on the front lines of international development, tackling fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability.