Across defence, security, development and climate, institutions are committing more than ever, yet delivery is at high risk of slowing down or even failing. The challenge is not money or expertise. It is the distance between commitment and action, and the systems that push partners apart when they need to work together.
We close that distance. We align knowledge, capability and financing so projects move faster, risks fall and returns compound. Whether it is a blended-finance programme, a defence and security strategy, an ecosystem-restoration approach, a development programme, a mediation process or philanthropic investments, we help institutions work as one system, cutting costs, amplifying impact, strengthening sustainability and minimising risks.
As AI becomes central to decision-making, coherence matters even more. AI amplifies whatever system it touches. We make sure it amplifies the right one.
Key numbers
23+ yearsTeam experience across financial institutions, governments and multilateral systems in emerging markets
20+ countriesDirect government and institutional engagement
60+ countriesWhere approaches supported by team members have informed investments
USD 300M+Development, blended and climate-related finance mobilised
Direct advisory relationships with the Islamic Development Bank Group and the World Bank Group, the European Union, United Nations entities, the African Union, sovereign governments and philanthropies. Across Asia, Europe, the Gulf and Africa.
Why this work matters now
Global armed conflict is at its highest level since the Second World War. Traditional development financing is shrinking as spending shifts to defence and security.
But financing has never prevented conflict or guaranteed sustainable growth. Success depends on three things: knowledge, the capability to act on that knowledge collectively, and the finance to sustain both. When any part of this triad is missing, the other two underperform. More money entering a system that cannot decide quickly simply buys tools that fragment at the boundary between institutions.+
Geopolitical trends have also upended the multilateral frameworks that once provided predictability. The old playbooks no longer apply. The constraint was never capital. It is institutional fragmentation; and geopolitics risks worsening the interoperability of systems. Innovation becomes essential here: without new ways of working together, old behaviours will keep producing old outcomes.
Into that gap, middle powers have the potential to emerge as practical anchors of sustainable peace and security by ensuring the co benefits between economic growth, social progress, environmental resilience, and food security - returns that reinforce one another. In a landscape without settled rules, advantage goes to those who act with agility, rewrite the playbook first, and find ways to work effectively together toward national and collective goals. Not to those who spend the most.
What turns knowledge into capability, and connects both to financing, is institutional operability. How states and their institutional partners learn. How they coordinate and work together. Whether they link the knowledge and capability dots to the financing pots. And whether the analysis behind their decisions is trusted by the people they serve.
This triad shapes interoperability - how institutions work together. To fill the void and rewrite the development, defence, and security playbooks, they will need to rewrite them together. Defence and security can no longer sit in isolation from development, social progress, economic growth, environmental concerns, or food security. The success and sustainability of one is co dependent on the others.
Middle powers and their partners will also need to move away from dependencies and build interdependencies that leverage their comparative advantages: the triad of knowledge, capability, and financing. This is what makes institutional interoperability the technical basis on which sovereign and regional institutions and partners can function as a collective.
And this is a hard transition to embark on. In Europe alone, thirty two countries (EU, NATO, EEA) and their institutions across development, defence, and security must find ways to work together. In Africa, it is fifty four. Coordination at that scale is demanding to ensure institutional interoperability - but not impossible. Strengthening interoperability takes time. Unlearning old behaviours and learning new ones always does. But as the current struggles of the super powers show, going alone does not consistently deliver the intended outcomes: be it victory in a conflict, economic gains, environmental ambition, or social progress. On the contrary, the limitations of going alone are being exposed. And, ironically, the importance of alliances is increasing at the very moment they are being dismantled.
There is something to be said for middle powers working together. And not only with each other. They will need to innovate how they cooperate with partners across Asia, the Middle East, the Gulf, and the Americas. This is a system reset for all alliances. An opportunity to shift toward sharing knowledge, capability, and financing in new, more innovative ways that unlock co benefits across development, peace, security, defence, and environmental resilience. Perhaps this is the age of the rise of the middle powers.
And there is a silver lining. Centuries of cooperation between countries and civilisations offer lessons on how alliances adapt as geopolitical landscapes shift. One lesson endures above all others from history’s old playbooks: sustained success comes from working together and leveraging each other’s comparative advantages. The most resilient alliances were built on that principle. Hopefully today’s and tomorrow’s playbooks will take a page or two from them.
02About
Observe. Act. Mentor.
OAM Consult is an independent advisory firm, established in Copenhagen in 2014. We work with governments, multilateral development banks, UN entities, regional bodies, institutional philanthropy and private investors. Across Western Europe, Africa, the Gulf and Asia.
Our starting premise is simple. The binding constraint has never been capital, and rarely technical knowledge. It is fragmentation, and the distance between commitment and delivery that fragmentation creates.
Capital gets allocated. Capability does not appear. Strategies are agreed. Then IFIs, DFIs, governments, development partners and private investors continue to operate to their own mandates, risk appetites, timelines and definitions of success. Each gathers its own data and decides alone what to do with it.
The failure is organisational. It is fixable over time, but only by people who have worked inside the institutions concerned. That is why we focus on institutional interoperability: connecting the knowledge and capability dots to the financing pots so they reinforce one another rather than operate in isolation.
We work with IFIs, DFIs, development partners, the private sector, the UN, governments, philanthropy, academic institutions and NGOs. We have engaged directly with governments in more than 20 countries, and our methods have been applied in more than 60. Innovation, returns and sustainability emerge when knowledge, capability and financing are aligned, not when they are fragmented.
We are a question-driven organisation. We interrogate the questions we put to the data as rigorously as the data itself.
A well-answered wrong question is the most expensive output across all sectors.
In a data deluge, this matters more than ever. It is how we determine what data is genuinely needed and reduce the risk that AI accelerates the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. AI amplifies whatever system it is applied to. Our job is to help partners build coherent, interoperable systems and ensure AI amplifies what is relevant, valuable and aligned with shared goals.
Who we work with
Our clients are small, middle and larger powers, regional institutions, development finance actors, the UN and NGOs. Their influence comes from credibility, agility and partnership. They carry the practical burden of stability through development investment, trade, mediation, diplomacy, defence, security and environmental action.
That work needs a playbook built for a nimble, adaptive system, grounded in continuous learning and designed to promote institutional interoperability. It connects the dots to the financing pots and treats interdependence as the return, rather than fragmentation as the default.
Intergovernmental organisations and regional bodies
International financial institutions and development finance institutions
Sovereign governments
Bilateral donors and foreign ministries
The private sector
OECD DAC, BRIC and MINT donors
Venture capital
The philanthropic sector
Academic and research institutions
Our team brings together senior practitioners, emerging experts and students from more than twenty countries. The experience we draw on combines work delivered directly through OAM with prior engagements led by team members before joining the firm. This collective background gives us practical insight into how these institutions operate.
Where we work
Western Europe · Eastern Europe · the Gulf · North, West, East and Southern Africa · the Sahel · South and Southeast Asia · East Asia · South America · North America
WHERE WE WORK
03Services
Five services, one method
01
Blending knowledge, capability and finance
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Concessional aid is receding. Middle and lower-middle-income states need private capital to replace it. We structure the financing frameworks that attract it.
Client case (2026-2027, ongoing): Designing a USD 300M+ regional blended finance vehicle. Partners include the Islamic Development Bank, the UN, IFIs, the private sector, DFIs and 10+ sub-Saharan governments.
02
Security, defence, development and peace
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Commitments are easy. Operational capability is not. We convert one into the other.
This draws on 20+ years working and learning with partners in conflict settings worldwide. We understand how armed groups form and why. We know how conflict dynamics evolve. We know where prevention instruments add value, and where they fall short.
Client case (2015-2026): Designed Operational Guidance Notes for security, defence and development personnel working with armed groups and on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. The notes cover gender, children, human rights, foreign fighters, CVE/PVE, detention and reintegration. They draw on African case examples, identified with military and security personnel at the coalface. The CVE/PVE note was the first of its kind. It went on to inform EU and UN policy on foreign fighters and terrorist groups. Over five years the notes have trained 1,000+ staff from 104 countries. Delivered face-to-face to 60+ organisations across the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, National Human Rights Institutions and civil society, and through online modules. The modules and implementation experiences have informed EU and UN policy on topics related to defence and security, including reintegration and how to deal with terrorist and armed groups.
Client case (2021): Pioneered a new UN approach to tracking finance for children affected by armed conflict. It directs defence and development money at the root causes of recruitment. Over the medium term, that reduces spiralling humanitarian costs.
03
A fit-for-purpose diplomatic and mediation approach
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Positioning, partnerships, mediation capacity and trade diplomacy. For governments and institutions across the Gulf, Africa, Europe and Asia.
Conflict is at its highest level since 1945. Technology and AI are reshaping how disputes escalate. Mediation needs a rethink.
One lesson stands out. Mediation must connect up front to the conflict prevention and conflict management instruments and investments that address root causes, including development investment. Relegating them to a later phase does not work. If affected populations do not have a seat at the table, they are on the menu. And conflict recurs.
With our partners, we help countries learn from experience. We build the capabilities past approaches lacked.
Client case (2024-2026): Our approach to compounding investment was showcased at UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh, alongside the UN, IFIs, governments and the League of Arab States. Those same partners now apply it across Africa and the Middle East.
04
Shared learning systems and data interoperability
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Most systems deliver late warning and late action. We move partners to early warning and early joint action.
That requires capability in place before the decision, across public and private silos.
The same investment underpins our monitoring and evaluation work. Every USD 1 invested in shared data and learning returns USD 30 to 100+. The figure comes from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and its analytical partners, in Multiplying Progress Through Data Ecosystems. Those partners include Dalberg Advisors, the UN, the World Bank, PARIS21, the OECD and Open Data Watch. The return varies by sector and use case. It comes from interoperable data systems, faster decisions, no duplicated appraisal, and one shared evidence base.
Client case (2020-2026):Continental early warning system for the African Union. Designed and implemented with the World Bank, UN, and UK FCO support. A global review found most conflict early warning systems are built for crisis management, not prevention. Response costs far exceed prevention costs. With ODA shrinking, investment must shift. The system now strengthens investment decisions across Africa. It has informed 176 investments in more than 40 countries. It is expected to inform 30+ further AU and member-state investments, including efforts to crowd in African private capital in high-risk contexts. In this regard, the African Union Peace Fund can play a more prominent role, and holds a lot of promise. Analysis from the system informs Peace Fund allocations. That is one of the clearest demonstrations that African-financed, African-owned security funding delivers measurable value when the analysis behind it is trusted.
Client case (2019-2020): Regional climate-smart investment framework for the Central Sahel. Co-designed with COWI Consult. A USD 150M regional investment programme and multi-partner framework for DANIDA, addressing root causes of conflict in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. It targeted forced migration and food insecurity through climate-smart agriculture and job creation. It convened the EU, the Netherlands, Germany and other development partners. It shaped the roles of the World Bank Group, IFAD, UNDP and NGOs.
05
Helping partners become AI ready
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We design systems where human judgement is the decision loop and AI is a tool inside it. Trust guardrails are built at design stage across data capture, sharing, analysis and action, so institutions can work as one system rather than as fragmented ones.
AI is an amplifier. It does not make a system more interoperable or less. It accelerates whatever the system already does. Applied without a common approach, each institution trains on its own data and definitions, producing outputs that partners cannot interrogate. Applied through a shared approach, it harmonises how data is captured, analysed and used.
AI readiness is not a financing question. Money buys tools. Only shared knowledge, aligned processes and interoperable systems turn those tools into collective action. We help partners build the coherence that AI can safely amplify, unlocking returns, impact and sustainability while reducing risk.
03 / ACTIONTrusted decisionsHuman judgement remains central
Client case (2026): We designed the African Union's first AI-centric data responsibility guidelines. They rest on one principle: the human is the loop, not merely in it. Judgement, relationships and accountability are the process, and AI serves them. The guidelines draw on a comparative review of data governance across Europe, the UK, the US, China and Africa.
Moderation is not a safeguard added at the end. It is what makes an output usable by a partner that did not generate it. AI applied to a late-signal architecture produces faster late warnings at greater scale, with less scope to examine how a conclusion was reached. That is worse interoperability and lower trust.
The guidelines support early-warning architecture, institutional learning and investment decisions in volatile environments. They are a first iteration by design, on a one-to-two-year revision cycle.
Client case (2022-ongoing): Ecoclipse is our AI-ready programme management and impact measurement software. It consolidates fragmented data into a single evidence base, enables partner systems to interoperate while retaining their own goals and methods, and gives clients a coherent base onto which they can safely layer AI.
04ECOCLIPSE
Turning fragmentation into compounding returns
The world is fragmenting. The playbooks for working across boundaries are being dismantled faster than they are rewritten. Partners who need each other cannot collaborate effectively. Data sits in incompatible formats. Methodologies diverge. There is no shared evidence base.
The condition is general. It is sharpest where needs are rising and financing is contracting. There, every unit of duplicated effort is a resource not spent on outcomes.
Duplication is the cost that looks affordable and is not.
01 / ALIGNMENT
One evidence base, without merging organisations
Ecoclipse blends and leverages the comparative advantages of what each partner brings: knowledge, capability and financing. It is built for a nimble, adaptive system, grounded in continuous learning and designed to strengthen institutional interoperability.
The name combines ecosystems and eclipsing. An eclipse aligns bodies without merging them. Ecoclipse brings goals, methods and data into alignment while each organisation remains its own.
Fragmented data is collected once into a single evidence base. A co-benefit approach generates metrics across economic growth, social progress, environmental resilience, food security, land, water, biodiversity and climate adaptation. Each partner draws the metrics it needs.
Many clients have one or two parts of the triad: knowledge, capability or financing. Few have all three. Ecoclipse connects them, makes coordination easier and shows the collective returns partners unlock by working together.
02 / VALUE
Better data. Faster decisions.
Collection and coordination time is cut by up to 50%. A fixed cost structure becomes proportionally cheaper as returns grow. This gives teams more time for shared analysis, stronger decisions and better returns on investment and impact.
Shared data and learning generate outsized returns. When partners operate from one evidence base, every USD 1 invested in data and learning can generate USD 30 to 100+ in returns, depending on sector and use case. The evidence comes from Multiplying Progress Through Data Ecosystems by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and its analytical partners.
Ecoclipse creates coherent, interoperable infrastructure for responsible AI integration. Applied to fragmented systems, AI amplifies fragmentation. Applied to a shared evidence base with common definitions and verifiable data, it amplifies coherence.
03 / IN OPERATION
Version 2.0
Version 2.0 benefits from four years of testing across 200+ end users and reflects more than thirty years of the team's collective experience in data collection, analysis and development programming across more than twenty countries.
Ecoclipse is fully EU-made and developed by OAM Consult in Denmark. It aligns with EU data compliance requirements, does not depend on non-EU components or AI models, and can be adapted to national or regional data protocols.
The initial co-benefit model was developed by our CEO, published with FAO, UNEP, UNCCD and the League of Arab States, and presented at UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh. It aligns economic, social, environmental and climate-adaptation outcomes.
Ecoclipse is rolling out in the Netherlands, where a private estate is applying the co-benefit approach to generate climate-adaptive and financially sound returns. A second rollout is underway in Saudi Arabia with NGO-sector organisations advancing Vision 2030 goals.
Our team is multidisciplinary and intergenerational by design. Its experience and networks come from direct OAM projects and engagements led before joining the firm. The structure mirrors our broader approach: connecting knowledge, capability and financing so they compound rather than fragment.
The team is deliberately mixed by geography and seniority. It spans professional and academic networks across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia. Junior analysts and interns work alongside seasoned experts who mentor them directly, strengthening learning and accelerating delivery.
Our team is drawn from public and private sectors and across economic development, social progress, environmental resilience, food security and conflict prevention. This is deliberate. Climate change, economic growth, food security and conflict must be addressed together, not in isolation.
Olivier A. Mukarji, MSc, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Olivier A. Mukarji founded OAM Consult in Copenhagen in 2014. He has more than 23 years of experience advising global financial institutions, sovereign governments, regional security alliances, multilateral development banks and international organisations.
He works with the Islamic Development Bank Group, the World Bank Group, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the African Development Bank, and has engaged with the African Union, the UN and governments in more than 20 countries. His methods have been applied in more than 60.
He has contributed to multiple peace and mediation processes in Africa and the Middle East, focusing on why people join and rejoin armed groups and on building the institutional capacities needed to predict, prevent and manage these risks.
He is the author of a distinctive approach to return on investment, published with the UN and showcased at UNCCD COP16. His work aligns economic, social and environmental returns so they compound, making interdependencies visible and bankable.
He also works on guardrails for emerging technology, pioneering the African Union's first data-responsibility guidelines blending human and artificial intelligence. The same logic underpins Ecoclipse, the software he developed to connect knowledge, capability and financing.
We operate as a core team supported by senior specialists brought in for what each engagement requires. They include experts in development and blended finance, climate financing, peace and security, governance, evaluation and regional political analysis, based across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
The structure is a deliberate response to fragmentation risks. We draw on the networks of every team member, senior and junior, academic and professional, public and private, and align them so they reinforce one another rather than operate in isolation.
Aalborg University · Aarhus University · Copenhagen Business School · Technical University of Denmark · KEA · University of Copenhagen
The internship programme
80+ interns and analysts. 20+ universities. Since 2014.
We have trained 80+ interns and junior analysts, drawn from over 20 universities worldwide.
What sets the experience apart is breadth. Interns work across multiple client portfolios at once, not a single desk. In one placement that can mean UN agencies, IFIs, the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, the private sector, governments and philanthropic funders. Across development finance, crowding in private capital, peace and security, and environmental factors including the Three Conventions.
Placements run six to ten months. Meaningful exposure to development finance, climate and peace and security cannot be compressed into eight weeks.
“An experience with OAM for six to ten months is like having five internships at once, building networks across 5+ organisations and academia.”Recurring feedback from OAM alumni.
Where our alumni go
OAM alumni have gone on to international financing institutions, UN agencies, McKinsey, BCG and Bain. To government ministries across finance, defence and development. To NGOs, venture capital, and academic careers at Sciences Po, Oxford, Lund, Waseda, KU Leuven and the University of Addis Ababa.
Recruitment
We recruit three times a year. Spring semester, autumn semester and summer. Three to five analysts per intake. Placements run six to ten months.
