LONDON — Charlie Goldsmith Associates, a company that delivers context-suitable technology to meet the needs of the world’s poorest communities and propel countries toward their development goals, has changed its name to CGA Technologies.
CGA Technologies operates as a UK-based for-profit entity within the Corus International family of organizations, which also includes global health, aid and development nonprofits IMA World Health and Lutheran World Relief and for-profits Ground Up Investing, an impact investing firm, and Farmers Market Brands LLC, a direct-trade coffee producer.
“The name CGA Technologies emphasizes the expertise and innovation of its staff, as well as one of the key approaches Corus takes as part of our holistic programming, using creative technological solutions to achieve and measure results in the increasingly complex and difficult environments of the world’s most marginalized communities,” said Daniel Speckhard, president and CEO of Corus International and board chair of CGA Technologies.
With a team of more than 50, CGA Technologies continues to work with government, faith, civil society and private sector partners in fragile, conflict-affected or low resource countries. The firm’s 2021 portfolio includes work in South Sudan, Malawi, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Mali.
Upon joining Corus International in 2019, CGA Technologies gained access to more resources, expanded global networks and a pool of expert staff from different sectors of international development, positioning the team to scale up the impact of their systems and approaches.
CGA Technologies specializes in developing practical, national-scale management systems for governments and supporting organizations to deliver basic services more effectively with disaggregate and near-real-time accountability, transparency and results data. The apps and management information systems CGA Technologies build facilitate cash transfers for education, health and social protection; track pupil attendance and school operations; and supports government ministries with payroll, human resource and attendance management approaches. In projects in challenging contexts, CGA Technologies’ team provide a unique complete service of strategy development, policy design and guidance, information systems and customized technology development, and on-ground implementation and operationalization.
Among its achievements over the past decade, the organization designed and created a system to collect real-time disaggregate information for pupils nationally, across more than 5,400 schools in South Sudan, enabling cash grant and teacher incentive programs that drove a tripling of enrolment between 2014-2020, from 900,000 to 2.7 million, and including a quadrupling of girls’ enrolment.
Joe Carlin, a retired Boeing executive and philanthropist who serves as vice chair of CGA Technologies, said the new name reinforces the organization’s achievements and promise. “It reflects a decade-long track record of making the data management and information systems that drive successful corporations available on a national scale in developing countries in a way that is bringing sustainable, positive change,” he said.
Charlie Goldsmith, who founded the firm in 2011 as a spinoff from global consultancy Booz & Company, and continues to serve as managing director, said the new name “captures how we have become the trusted source for governments and other clients in the international development arena needing fast, adaptive delivery of sustainable technology solutions that are designed to be accessible to the widest range of users, even in hard-to-reach and low connectivity places.”
Follow CGA Technologies on the web at http://cgatechnologies.org.uk/ and on Twitter (@CGATech_UK), LinkedIn (CGA Technologies) and Facebook (@cgatech).