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CFYE – Human-Centered Design Coaching of African Companies
- Thomas
- Kenya and Nigeria
- February 1, 2026
Situation
The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment is a €114 million initiative of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs aiming to create 200,000 dignified, demand-driven jobs for young people across the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel, West Africa and the Horn of Africa. To ensure its investees deliver opportunities that are productive, safe and youth-responsive, CFYE selected Proportion as its technical partner for embedding Human-Centered Design (HCD) in company strategies and proposals.
Assignment
Proportion was tasked with supporting 20 Kenya-based applicants to strengthen the youth- and customer-centredness of their funding proposals, and guiding 10 funded companies in Nigeria to refine their value propositions, business cases and scale-up models. The engagement has since expanded to Lebanon, Sudan and Egypt.
Approach
A remote training introduced companies to three practical HCD tools: user-journey mapping, empathy mapping and the value-proposition canvas. Each company received tailored one-on-one coaching, beginning with an intake to articulate assumptions and challenges; an advisory session on conducting design research with youth and customers; and a second advisory session to translate insights into product, service and business-model innovations.
Result
Thirty companies in Kenya and Nigeria now actively apply HCD to strengthen scale-up strategies that generate youth employment. Kenyan food-processing entrepreneurs validated new product concepts and discovered customers would pay higher prices than assumed, boosting viability and farmer margins. A Nigerian digital-payments company redesigned both its customer journey and agent-onboarding process, reducing friction and improving performance. Following these successes, Proportion has been contracted to support all future CFYE cohorts across Africa for the next three years.