Our Approach

Applied Intersectionality

Our original methodology for solving entangled problems.

This is the page for funders, partners and field practitioners who want to dig in. The short version: most development work fails because it treats interlocking systems as separable. We don’t.

The intellectual lineage

From people to systems

We extend Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality from identity to infrastructure.

Intersectionality, as Crenshaw introduced it in 1989, is the insight that human experience cannot be neatly partitioned by category. A Black woman is not the sum of being Black and being a woman; the compound of those positions creates conditions invisible to either lens alone.

The same logic, we argue, holds for the systems people live inside. Water is not a hydrology problem; it is a hydrology problem compounded with governance, gender, climate, livelihoods and health. Pull on one strand and the others move.

Solve one problem in isolation and the others pull it back into the failure mode it came from.

Applied Intersectionality is the operational form of that observation. It says: design the team to match the shape of the problem. Map the system before you touch the budget. Build for the whole web, not one strand. Hand it off when ownership can hold it. Measure outcomes, not outputs.

In practice the methodology resolves into three operational movements (input, process, output) we call the Theory of Change — and a logic model that lets us tell funders, with a straight face, what their money is being asked to do.

Theory of Change

Three operational movements

The methods we use, what we ask of partners, how we know we succeeded.

Input · Pillar 01

Radical Collision

Bring unlikely people together — poets with policymakers, grandmothers with engineers.

We architect the room, then we get out of its way. Each project starts by mapping the implicated disciplines, communities and decision-makers — then explicitly inviting people who don't usually share an agenda.

Concrete moves: scoping interviews across disciplines; targeted invitation lists with quotas for non-traditional voices (artists, traditional leaders, youth, women's groups); facilitated first sessions designed to surface power asymmetries before they hide inside the agenda.

We know it worked when

The room talks across disciplines without translation. People who arrived suspicious leave with a problem they want to solve together.

Process · Pillar 02

Applied Imagination

Equip these teams with tools to map problems and find leverage points.

Imagination without method is wishing. We bring the methods. Systems mapping (causal-loop diagrams, stock-and-flow models), design-justice protocols, theory-of-change canvases, prototyping sprints calibrated to the resources actually available in the field.

The work is to move the room from "what if" to "how to" — turning intuition into structures that decisions can be made on. Half the time the leverage point is smaller, weirder and cheaper than anyone arrived expecting.

We know it worked when

The team has a shared map of the system, a short list of leverage points, and an agreement on which to test first.

Output · Pillar 03

Systemic Resilience

Produce solutions that hold up because they address multiple problems at once.

What ships isn't a project — it's a system, designed to keep working after the funding cycle ends and the consultants leave. Community ownership is a milestone with a date on it, not a slogan. Costs scale down, not up. Maintenance is local. Failure modes are documented and survived.

We reject the donor-output trap (boreholes drilled, workshops held) in favour of outcomes that compound: water access tied to school attendance; clinic uptime tied to local procurement; women's leadership representation as a leading indicator, not a side effect.

We know it worked when

Three years on, the thing still works. Costs are lower, governance is local, and the donor isn't propping it up.

Logic model

From inputs to impact

The chain we ask funders to evaluate us on.

Inputs

What we put in.

Multi-disciplinary collective
Methodology toolkit
Catalytic capital
Community partnerships

Activities

What we do.

Convening unlikely rooms
Systems-mapping sprints
Co-design with communities
Prototyping in-field

Outputs

What we ship.

Operational systems
Frameworks & playbooks
Founder cohorts
Strategy + governance plans

Outcomes

What changes within 3 years.

Local ownership transfers
Operating costs down ≥ 50%
Cross-system co-benefits
Replication by peers

Impact

What we’re betting toward.

Resilient communities
Closed gender gaps in voice
Climate-adaptive systems
Intersectional public sector

We negotiate every engagement against this chain. If a funder wants us to optimise for an output we don’t believe ladders up to a real outcome, we say so before the contract is signed.

Let’s talk

Let’s build new worlds

Tell us what you’re working on.

info@anduberinnovate.space

Phone

+254107025817

Headquarters

Nairobi, Kenya

Global reach

/company/anduber

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