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Charted Thinking

Updated: Dec 13, 2022

A lot of analysis goes into breaking down economies, sectors and value chains to drive our project development​

A selection of our favourite charts shows how we create insights and make decisions


Uganda has a big Arabica opportunity in the west

Coffee production in Uganda by grade (60 kg bags)


The top half of this chart shows single-origin, premium coffees grown in the east of Uganda. These coffees sell into premium export markets.

The bottom dark blue block is unwashed "Drugar" Arabica from the west. With acute quality problems the unwashed coffee sells at major discounts, or not at all.

The opportunity is to convert Drugar to washed coffee and capture the quality premium.



Malawi is trapped in cash-crop dependency

Malawi's exports by type, (% of total), 2017


This chart shows the products Malawi is exporting to the world.

Not only are almost all exports basic agricultural products, but most is tobacco.

Malawi, like many other African Countries, has a very low score of economic complexity. This is a measure of the productive capacities of cities, regions, countries linked to their inherent knowledge.

Diversification beyond this narrow set of products will be essential for the country’s social and economic growth.


Coal's development effect makes it hard to cut

Top 25 countries by the CO2 and coal intensity of their economies, 2017

The development of Asian economies raised millions of people out of poverty. Much of this was driven by low cost coal-fired power generation

The biggest challenge in mitigating climate change is to rapidly convert these still developing economies with high levels of CO2 per dollar of GDP to low carbon economies. Countries already in transition like Japan and Germany are wrestling with the effects of shutting down nuclear power and compensating with


South Africa is critically under-performing its peers

Development outcomes in mining-intensive countries

(HDI and income), 1990 - 2015


Comparing countries with mining-intensive economies shows some good development results since 1990. Ghana, Peru and Chile broke out of poor or poorer status, to reach middle income or beyond. South Africa is an outlier to the strong correlation between income growth and improving HDI. To change this it will have to address its high inequality.

​The non-moving very poor countries are hampered by poor governance.

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