The East African coastline seen from orbit — golden land meeting the deep Indian Ocean.

Somalia · Kenya · East Africa — since 2013

Trust is built
in the open.

AccordCompass Advisory is a strategic communications and stakeholder engagement consultancy for the public and development sector — helping institutions and financed projects earn understanding, alignment and trust.

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Roads are engineered.

Grids are engineered.

Public trust is left to chance.

Since 2013, we have engineered that too.

The practice

Eight services.
One standard of proof.

Each stands alone; they compound when run together. Read them as chapters of the same discipline.

Communication Strategy & Advisory

The plan behind every public word.

Institution-wide and project-level communication strategies built on evidence, not instinct: situation analysis, audience segmentation and messaging frameworks; channel planning that reflects how your publics get information; protocol and spokesperson guidance; and annual communication plans with objectives you can measure. For leadership, standing advisory support on positioning and on the communications no one wants to get wrong — sensitive announcements, controversy and reform.

  • Situation analysis
  • Audience segmentation
  • Messaging frameworks
  • Channel planning
  • Spokesperson protocols
  • Annual plans
  • Leadership advisory

Stakeholder Engagement Planning & Implementation

SEPs that stand up to safeguards scrutiny.

Stakeholder Engagement Plans compliant with World Bank ESS10, IFC Performance Standards and comparable frameworks — written to be implemented, not filed. Stakeholder identification and mapping, influence–interest analysis, engagement calendars, disclosure planning and the documentation systems that make it all auditable. Then we stay: supporting implementation across the project lifecycle as the project and its stakeholders change.

  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Influence–interest analysis
  • Engagement calendars
  • Disclosure planning
  • Documentation systems
  • ESS10 / IFC PS compliance

Citizen Consultation & Grievance Redress

Consultation people can actually reach.

Public and community consultations that people can attend, understand and speak at — multilingual outreach, deliberate inclusion of vulnerable and hard-to-reach groups, and feedback registers that prove what was said. And Grievance Redress Mechanisms that work as systems, not suggestion boxes: intake channels people already use, case management, escalation pathways, and resolution tracking with reporting your financiers will accept.

  • Community consultations
  • Multilingual outreach
  • Inclusion of vulnerable groups
  • Feedback registers
  • GRM design & operation
  • Resolution tracking

Project Communications for Financed Operations

Deliverables that satisfy missions and audits.

Donor- and IFI-financed projects carry communication obligations most teams discover late. We run the whole component: visibility and branding compliance under each financier’s rules, milestone and results communication, beneficiary information materials, and site-level information for the communities living next to the works — documented, dated and defensible.

  • Visibility & branding compliance
  • Milestone communication
  • Beneficiary materials
  • Site-level information
  • Supervision-ready reporting

Institutional Coordination & Liaison

A documented trail across every party.

Multi-party programs fail quietly in the gaps between institutions. We keep the structure: correspondence management across government, financiers and implementing agencies; meeting and mission coordination; agreed minutes and decision records that everyone signs; escalation support when a decision stalls. Accountability stays traceable, and no commitment evaporates between meetings.

  • Correspondence management
  • Mission coordination
  • Agreed minutes
  • Decision records
  • Escalation support

Capacity Building & Training

Capability that stays when we leave.

Practical training for ministry communication units and project implementation units (PIUs) — built around the work already on their desks. Engagement and facilitation skills, communication planning, GRM operation, disclosure practice: taught through real cases, then reinforced through mentoring that transfers capability instead of creating dependence. Success is measured by how little you need us afterwards.

  • Facilitation skills
  • Communication planning
  • GRM operation
  • Disclosure practice
  • Mentoring programs

Public Awareness & Information Campaigns

Measured by comprehension, not reach alone.

Public information and behavior-change campaigns for reforms, programs and services — from campaign strategy and creative concepts to materials in the languages people speak, disseminated at community level through channels communities trust. We monitor reach and comprehension, because a message that arrived but was not understood is a cost, not a result.

  • Campaign strategy
  • Creative concepts
  • Local-language materials
  • Community dissemination
  • Comprehension monitoring

Research, Perception Studies & Communication Audits

Evidence that engagement changed something.

The evidence layer under everything else: stakeholder analysis, perception and awareness surveys, focus groups, and communication audits of what your institution is saying and how it lands. Baseline and endline studies measure whether engagement changed understanding and trust — so you can show a board, a minister or a mission the difference between activity and effect.

  • Perception surveys
  • Focus groups
  • Communication audits
  • Baseline / endline studies
  • Stakeholder analysis
How we work — The Bearing, our method since 2013

Four movements.
One continuous course.

PHASE 01

Orient

Listen before anything. We establish where the project actually is — not where its documents say it is: stakeholder identification and mapping, perception baselines, situation and risk analysis, and an honest reading of history.

  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Perception baseline
  • Situation analysis
  • Risk & history review
PHASE 02

Chart

Turn listening into a plan. Strategy is written against the evidence from Orient: messaging frameworks, SEPs and disclosure plans, engagement calendars, GRM design — with measurable objectives and a documentation system underneath.

  • Messaging frameworks
  • SEP & disclosure plans
  • Engagement calendars
  • GRM design
PHASE 03

Navigate

Do the work, in public. Consultations, campaigns, liaison, grievance operation, day-to-day counsel — implemented with discipline and recorded as we go, so every commitment has a paper trail behind it.

  • Consultations & campaigns
  • Liaison & coordination
  • GRM operation
  • Standing counsel
PHASE 04

Hold course

Measure, correct, transfer. Endline and perception studies test whether understanding and trust moved. We correct course, report to the standard financiers expect, and transfer capability so the practice survives our exit.

  • Endline studies
  • Course correction
  • Supervision-ready reporting
  • Capability transfer
2013Established
13+Years in practice
2Operating bases — Somalia & Kenya
4Working languages

Where we work

Six sectors. One craft.

The stakes change by sector; the craft of alignment does not.

A

Health systems

Service reforms, facility programs and public-health campaigns that live or die on community confidence.
B

Infrastructure

Corridors, ports and roads — where engagement with affected communities decides the schedule.
C

Energy & climate

Generation, transmission and adaptation programs — explained before the pylons arrive.
D

Governance & institutions

Institutional reforms and public bodies earning visible, verifiable trust.
E

Water & urban services

Utilities, sanitation and urban upgrading — services people feel daily and judge instantly.
F

Education & social programs

School systems, safety nets and skills programs reaching the households they exist for.

Regional presence

Positioned where the work is.

Operating base

Somalia

Engagement across federal and member-state institutions, and the financed operations rebuilding systems and services — grounded in fluency with the country’s institutional landscape.

Operating base

Kenya

Kenya is the region’s hub for financiers and implementing partners — we work within that institutional ecosystem, and well beyond it, where programs land.

Regional reach

East Africa

Deployments across the wider region for programs that cross borders: trade corridors, energy interconnection, basin management, regional health.

Working languagesSomaliKiswahiliEnglishArabic

Perspectives

Field notes.

N·01

Disclosure is not engagement.

A PDF on a project website satisfies a checklist; it does not inform a community. Disclosure owes people comprehension: the right language, the right format, the right moment — before positions harden, not after. The test is never “was it published?” It is “who understood it — and how do we know?”

The checklist is the floor, not the finish.

N·02

The grievance register is a trust instrument.

Most projects treat the GRM as a compliance appendix. Communities treat it as a test: does raising a problem change anything? Every case resolved and visibly closed is a deposit of credibility; every case lost in a spreadsheet is a withdrawal. Run the register as if it decides your license to operate — because socially, it does.

Cases close. Confidence compounds.

N·03

Language is infrastructure too.

Engagement that stops at English stops at the ministry gate. A single project here can cross four languages before it reaches its beneficiaries — and every translation is a chance to be misunderstood at scale. Budget for language the way you budget for cement: as a structural material, not a finishing touch.

Speak where people listen.

A 90-second instrument

Is your project on course?

Seven honest statements. Answer as things are — not as the last report described them. Nothing is recorded; this runs entirely on this page.

01

We can name our ten most influential stakeholders — and each one’s current position.

02

Our stakeholder engagement plan has been updated since the project last changed.

03

A community member can raise a grievance through a channel they already use.

04

We know what beneficiaries actually understand about the project — not just what we told them.

05

Every consultation we have held is documented well enough to survive an audit.

06

Our spokespeople would all give the same answer to “what is this project for?”

07

Bad news reaches project leadership before it reaches the press.

Your bearing
Awaiting your answers.

Answer all seven statements to take a reading of your project’s engagement health.

0 / 7 answered
Semi-arid escarpment at last light. The terrain we work in — literal and institutional

About the firm

Thirteen years
on one course.

Since 2013, AccordCompass Advisory has been closing the distance between institutions and the people they serve.

We work for government ministries, public institutions, development organizations and projects financed by the World Bank, UN agencies, the African Development Bank and similar institutions — operating from Somalia and Kenya, serving the wider East African region.

Thirteen years of consultations, campaigns, grievance systems and program communications — through election cycles, droughts, reforms and full program lifecycles — taught us one thing above all: trust is earned in process, not in press releases.

“We earn trust the way we advise our clients to: slowly, visibly and in public.”

CandorRigorProximityIndependence

Asked, answered.

With a conversation, then a short diagnostic. We scope the situation, propose a clear set of deliverables and a timeline, and agree terms before work starts. For urgent situations — a stalled consultation, a grievance backlog, a supervision mission on the calendar — we can mobilize a focused intervention quickly.

Yes. We design against World Bank ESS10, IFC Performance Standards and comparable frameworks, alongside national requirements — and we build the documentation trail that makes compliance demonstrable, not just claimed.

Yes. We operate from Somalia and Kenya and take regional deployments across East Africa, particularly for cross-border programs — corridors, interconnectors, basin management and regional health programs. Feasibility is assessed engagement by engagement.

Gladly. We fit naturally as the stakeholder engagement and communications component of larger technical teams. Send the terms of reference and your deadline to info@accordcompass.com and we will respond with a capability statement.

Somali, Kiswahili, English and Arabic. Materials are developed in the languages your stakeholders use — not translated as an afterthought — and other languages of the region can be covered through local partners.

Time-based or deliverable-based, agreed transparently up front, with fee structures compatible with public procurement and donor rules. You will always know what a deliverable costs before we start it.

We are hiring across the region.

People who can hold a room in a district hall, draft for a minister, and document both to audit standard — consultants, facilitators, field researchers, translators. Introduce yourself in any of our working languages.

Introduce yourself
Contact

Set your bearing.

Tell us where your project stands — we will come back with a view, not a brochure.

info@accordcompass.com
accordcompass.com Somalia · Kenya · East Africa Public & development sector only Est. 2013