CASA NEXUS / The Firm
A Kenyan firm built to do the work that used to be flown in.
For decades, the analysis that shaped African policy and African programmes was produced elsewhere. The evidence base for decisions taken in Nairobi was assembled in London, Washington, or Geneva, at a cost that consumed a meaningful share of the budget it was meant to improve.
CASA NEXUS was built on a straightforward proposition: the expertise is already here, it is cheaper here, and it is closer to the problem. What was missing was an institution willing to hold itself to the same published standard.
- Legal name
- CASA NEXUS Limited
- Base
- Kimathi Street, Nairobi CBD
- Practices
- Four, one evidence base
- Method
- The SSII Framework™
- Ethos
- Rooted in People. Growing with Purpose.
Why this firm exists
We did not wait for an invitation. We published because the decision was too consequential to argue inside government memos.
That sentence is the clearest statement of what separates this firm from a consultancy. A consultancy answers the question it is paid to answer. An institution takes a position on the questions that matter whether or not anyone is paying.
We do both. The client work funds the research; the research sets the standard the client work is held to. When we evaluate a national infrastructure fund on our own initiative and publish the score openly, we are also telling every prospective client exactly what our methodology looks like under scrutiny.
It is a harder way to build a firm, and it is the only way to be taken seriously alongside the international houses.
What we hold ourselves to, on every engagement
Six commitments a client can hold us to.
These are not values statements. They are the specific things we will do, and the specific things we will refuse to do, on your engagement.
We report confidence separately from performance
Every SSII engagement reports a Strategic Integrity Score and an Evidence Confidence Index, and never one without the other. The evidence band then sets a claim licence that fixes the strongest verb we are permitted to use. If your programme looks strong but the record behind it is thin, you get told so rather than handed a headline that cannot survive a donor’s scrutiny.
A protection failure caps the rating
The SSII safeguarding veto caps the reportable band at Low–Moderate whenever a do no harm red flag appears, regardless of the composite. It cannot be waived by a client and is lifted only by re-collected evidence. A safeguarding problem cannot be averaged away by a strong delivery number, because in practice that is exactly how such problems stay buried.
We stay through the sustain phase
Diagnose, design, deliver, sustain. Most partners stop at the third move and hand over a document. We remain through a coaching phase until your own team is running the system without us, because that is the only point at which a change has actually held.
We work inside the project, not beside it
Our people embed with your team and co-build in real time. Policies and systems are written with the people who will have to use them, in the way the organisation actually runs, rather than delivered as a template that gets filed and forgotten.
Our policy research carries no paywall
Work in the Policy & Evaluation Series is published open access for public distribution. If analysis is going to shape a decision that affects the public, the public should be able to read it and argue with it.
We end in decisions, not findings
You commission evidence and you receive a plan. Every engagement closes with ranked options and the cost of the alternatives, including the cost of doing nothing, so the report has somewhere to go after it is read.
Who signs the work
Named authorship, on the record.
Our published research carries an author’s name and credentials, not just a company logo. The person who signs the evaluation is the person who stands behind it.
Samwel Ochieng Onono, MeCOHD, MBA
Co-CEO & Chairperson
Development economist and programme strategist. He leads the CASA Research Pillar and is the author of the firm’s baseline evaluation of Kenya’s National Infrastructure Fund, published in March 2026 within hours of the Act being signed into law.
His work concentrates on the structural questions underneath headline growth: how public capital is raised and deployed, why fiscal resistance functions as an accountability mechanism, and where the productive economy is being displaced by activity that looks like enterprise but does not compound.
- Author, Kenya NIF baseline evaluation, SSII Framework™, March 2026
- Author, The Aesthetics Trap: Gen-Z, TikTok Commerce & Africa’s Growth Deficit
- Author, The INGO Reckoning: A Post-Trump Adaptation
The associate model
How a team is assembled
CASA NEXUS runs a core team with a bench of senior associates drawn from evaluation, public finance, protection, health, and field research. A study is staffed for the question it has to answer rather than from whoever happens to be free.
That is how a Nairobi firm delivers international-standard rigour without carrying international-firm overheads, and it is why our costs sit at a fraction of what a flown-in team charges for the same scope.
- Senior evaluators and field research leads across East Africa
- Specialist depth in GBV, safeguarding, and protection
- Public finance and infrastructure analysts
- In-house media production and behaviour change communication
What changes when the firm is already in the market
Four practices, one evidence base
Consulting
Design · Governance · Compliance
Project design and set-up, donor readiness, grants and finance compliance, measurement systems, and safe access.
02Research & Evaluation
Evidence · Baselines · Policy
Programme evaluations, baselines, field data, learning partnerships, and policy briefs.
03Media & Communication
Voice · Studio · Behaviour change
Executive presence, owned media, films, podcasts, and campaigns built to move behaviour.
04Foundation & CSR
Community investment · Reporting
Corporate community investment designed, delivered, and measured end to end.
We hire people who want their name on the work.
CASA NEXUS is a small firm doing work that is larger than its size, which means responsibility arrives early. If you are an evaluator, analyst, producer, or communications professional who wants to publish rather than ghost-write, we would like to hear from you.
Pioneer, Kimathi Street, Floor 3, Suite 3, Nairobi CBD. We are a short walk from the city centre and happy to meet in person; most first conversations start with a call.
Tell us the decision you are trying to make.
Not the deliverable, the decision. It is usually the fastest way for us to say whether we are the right firm for it, and to be honest with you when we are not.