COIGNE

COIGNE is an environmental patient capital vehicle for locally owned enterprises in endangered conservation regions and economic buffer zones around protected areas. We build wildlife-compatible economies at scale by investing in community-owned enterprises tackling conservation, climate mitigation, food security, and supply-chain sustainability. The aim of COIGNE is to rebalance and protect natural capital assets with economically independent communities seeking to increase direct employment and enterprise ownership. The by-product will be a 10%+ reduction in wildlife crime in 5+ African nations while achieving ESG and 15 SDG criteria. These blended returns will be monitored by our proprietary risk management system. COIGNE is a strategic approach that saturates a specific region by capitalizing multiple locally-owned enterprises creating both scale and political community leverage—thereby generating sustainable local economies that harness their environment and wildlife. COIGNE will deliver an entrepreneurial ecosystem led by indigenous communities—providing new direct employment, market-based incentives, and sustainable profits.

Conservation is failing globally because communities are not adequately represented in the conservation value chain. The sector model is donor-oriented and primarily managed by foreign-led NGOs. Projects are cherry- picked, scattered, and uncoordinated with weak tactical capacity and traction. The inability to leverage governments is based in part on “logo wars” and the NGO publicity machine with expat interference that is neither welcome by host nations nor effective in reducing wildlife crime. The sector has been unable to sustain or strengthen its approaching systems and results measurement. Projects do not achieve scalability or indigenous self-reliance within grant cycles. The focus is on wildlife protection with sustainability and climate mitigation projects designed in a reactionary manner to short-term trends. NGOs have become “sleeping policemen” to progress their own agenda. Ethical lines are crossed — from inflated salaries and high overheads to human rights violations and sanctioned violence against indigenous communities. COVID-19 has accelerated the decline of conservation. Foreign-led NGOs are increasingly absent, ineffective, and distrusted. There is a lower demand for raw materials with a subsequent decrease in government revenue, leading to more unemployment and inequality. The post-colonial conservation model is broken and there is a duty to fill the void.

COIGNE overturns the donor model (and traditional exit) to keep profits in the hands of local communities. We unlock scalable asset capital and market-based incentives by interlinking local entrepreneurs for financial and social returns. Indigenous people control the balance between self-determining livelihoods and nurturing their environment, habitat, and wildlife. COIGNE provides a new framework for communities and governments to redress the current situation whereby natural capital is being eroded. For the next generation to break the cycle of generational poverty and biodiversity loss, communities need to take back control. By 2035, African youth of working age will exceed the rest of the world combined. There is a SME sector-financing gap of $136B per year. Before the pandemic, 220M Africans from 33 LDCs were malnourished. For communities living in endangered conservation regions, their income and food security relies on the illegal wildlife trade. Our competitive edge is a proprietary, tech-enabled COIGNE Risk Management System. It helps an analyst capture, break down, and collate information to measure the degrees of risk. It monitors agendas, conflicts, and trends for investors and investees. Our system has been operational for 9 years in conservation and security projects in Kenya and Nigeria, including 27 wildlife conservancies. 

Our initial pipeline is focused on sustainable agriculture, commerce, and tourism startups in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, DRC, South Africa, and Ethiopia. SMEs account for 90% of all businesses in Africa. $28.2B USD is invested annually in Africa’s tourism sector alone, but only contributes to 6.5% of employment for a population of 1.2 billion (expected to double by 2050) with 60% under the age of 25. COVID-19 has caused a collapse of the wildlife tourism sector. Communities and governments are keen to have COIGNE in-country, as our revenue-based investing enables them to break reliance on aid and corruption while growing generational wealth. Our multi-generational founders offer 119 years combined experience building trust with the target population. COIGNE reinforces the opportunities for our target market to maximize strengths where their mutual interests intersect. This is commercial activity where the onus lies with indigenous people to build wildlife-enabled economies at scale. COIGNE has met with heads of state, ministers, tribal chiefs, cooperatives, and entrepreneurs from 35+ African nations to validate our concept, refine metrics, and build our pipeline. COIGNE has attended the Business of Conservation Conference in Rwanda (2018, 2019); Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference in London (2018); and the UK-Africa Investment Summit (2020). 

COIGNE tackles Good Jobs & Inclusive Entrepreneurship, Learning For Girls and Women, Sustainable Food Systems, and Health Security & Pandemics. Within these dimensions, we solve for workforce development, inclusive entrepreneurship, food security, and sustainable supply chains that can survive shocks to communities such as pandemics, conflict, and security. Africa is unable to meet its basic operating needs for over 90% of its wildlife protected areas (annual $3B shortfall before COVID-19). Meanwhile, indigenous communities in conservation zones are not receiving equitable benefits for protecting their endangered wildlife. Investing in these communities to build wildlife-compatible economies at scale is our COIGNE model.

COIGNE is a patient capital vehicle investing in locally owned enterprises in conservation regions. We identify investment opportunities in wildlife-compatible economies and provide structure and processes to scale community-owned enterprises. COIGNE enters the target market with a scale and capability to leverage and engage with national players from a position of competitive advantage. COIGNE bypasses normal conservation, commercial and NGO protocols or practices – by setting our own agenda with a unique funding model. COIGNE provides loans to locally owned enterprises in return for a percentage of their profits for a limited period. We cooperate with communities for mutually beneficial opportunities linking SDG and ESG criteria. COIGNE leverages government proactively due to the breadth of community stakeholders and commercial entities, building synergies and shared objectives while reducing vulnerability to corrupt practices. COIGNE changes the foreign aid-driven conservation paradigm with a focus on keeping profits in the hand of communities to foster generational wealth transfer and entrepreneurial ecosystems. COIGNE enables a founder to: take back control of their natural capital; keep profits local; retain enterprise ownership; scale-up their business; build local supply chains; employ their village directly; grow generational wealth; and decrease wildlife crime. Our COIGNE Risk Management System monitors the delivery of projects into communities, while capturing risk and changing conditions. In 10-15 years, our vision is an interconnected portfolio of economically independent communities with: (1) increase in direct employment, enterprise ownership, and decision-making power; (2) decrease in wildlife crime and ecosystem destruction; and (3) scale-up of African wildlife-enabled economies. 

Impact investing is inherently risky because it is difficult to measure the scale and impact of an investment using traditional statistical methods of data analysis. Social impact at COIGNE is measured mostly by changes to human behavior, but risk of this type cannot be measured in numbers. Impact risk involves uncertainty about relevance, consequence, and reactions. Information about behavior is sourced from observations of and by people. Therefore, it concerns stories in unstructured, narrative form. Our COIGNE Risk Management System (CRMS) is web-based and AI-enabled so information collection can be done locally. It was designed to monitor and mitigate stakeholder frictions, agendas, and trends with shared benefits to investors, entrepreneurs, and communities. CRMS offers visual simplicity in the collation of events. Patterns can be detected with ease. Links between people, locations, and assets are simplified. When visualized, these links inform risk, action, and policy. Relationships between people, events, and organizations are assessed. We understand the relationships between players and groups to anticipate how they will react to events, proposals, and incentives. Our visualization tools build new relevance and deep understanding of cause and effect. CRMS offers visual simplicity in the collation of events. Patterns can be detected with ease. Further, COIGNE has adapted and applied seven core military processes that have been tried, tested, and proven by our founders in military, commercial, and wildlife spaces. Known as the "COIGNE Seven Pillars", they provide increased clarity and rigor to counter unseen shock. Five of these processes operate on our IT platform.

NOTE: A video demo, case studies, and slide deck are available upon request. It is not publicly available due to data sensitivity. 

Our COIGNE Risk Management System has been operational for nine years in environmental and security projects. It has been used by 27 wildlife conservancies in Kenya. One example of its use in Nigeria: There was an inter-ethnic conflict between the Itsekiri and Ijaw communities in the Niger Delta oil-producing region of Nigeria. The conflict revolved around access to wealth including contracts, employment, and corruption. National and international oil companies were not only the target for perceived or actual grievances, but they were arguably complicit given failures in governance, transparency, and practices. The result was force majeure and widespread closure of onshore and nearshore oil producing fields given physical attacks on facilities and a more general threat against personnel. The CEO’s focus was on growth developing the deep-water business as well as gas to liquids. The challenge was to isolate these new businesses from the existing joint ventures with all its shortcomings. We applied our proprietary processes to the developing situation and defined an end state that revolved around people, performance, and partnerships. The management team understood the new direction and the company was restructured with pooled services and delegations. It remains imperfect and the natural cultural instincts continue to thrive, although production has been more resilient over the last decade while other international oil companies have been less successful. The ability to process information into knowledge is powerful. 

In the next year, COIGNE seeks anchor funding to: (1) Refine stakeholder metrics, structure requirements, financial modeling, and impact theses; (2) Grow dedicated pipeline and project saturation strategy; (3) Scale-up risk management tools to deploy AI rules and hire analysts to prepare our systems with continuous risk analysis and data inputs; (4) Set up an office in East Africa with an agile in-country team with expertise in finance, operations, and logistics. Our risk management system whereby security, intelligence, communications, and operations interact continuously across the portfolio will coordinate with communities. COIGNE will continue meeting with social entrepreneurs, ministers, suppliers, conservationists, inventors, chiefs, inventors, and cooperative leaders to build our dedicated project pipeline for pooled investment platform on the African continent. Within the next five years, COIGNE seeks to raise $100M (to include but not limited to Technical Assistance Facility and Limited Partner funding) to make $200K-1.5M investments in 250+ locally owned companies in 2+ African nations. Phase 1 (Understand The Game) will be completed with COIGNE profile invisible. Phase 2 (Shape The Opportunity) will be achieved with COIGNE barely visible. Phase 3 (Implement And Deliver COIGNE Portfolio) will be completed with COIGNE becoming visible. By Year 5, Phase 4 (Consolidate And Transition To New Regions) will be underway with some loans repaid, with options to increase basket or withdraw to new ventures. COIGNE will have become a catalyst for change by diverting international funding streams to COIGNE, challenging large NGOs and coordinating efforts in support of our model and approach.

COVID-19 has accelerated the decline of wildlife conservation. Commercial community investment based on a regional saturation strategy is critical in our rural, complex market. COIGNE needs to secure anchor investment and build capability as an acceptable risk in our unserved, high-risk population. This will enable us to provide ROI over time to investors, leverage commercial opportunities, and show benefits for wildlife and biodiversity. COIGNE will need an interconnected, cooperative portfolio of 350-750 projects whereby risk can be monitored and measured continuously by our AI-driven software, human analysts, and IT platform. At COIGNE, there will be no donations, self-perpetuating protectionist cabals, or competing interests. Most community-led enterprises will prosper although some will fail. The challenge for communities and governments is to demonstrate that Africa can leapfrog forward from this pandemic given their valuable natural resources, willingness to grasp new technology, and young population with strong tribal bonds. Although pipeline development in our niche market is a challenge, COIGNE's biggest barrier to scale is raising the fund from bold investors willing to take this journey with us over the next decade. If COIGNE can provide investors with lower risk for investing in rural enterprise growth with favorable returns in conservation regions, then our entrepreneurial ecosystem will maximize and leverage local talent and resources for prosperity creation by and for rural communities otherwise engaged in illicit wildlife trafficking and trade. To reduce wildlife crime, sustainable revenue streams are needed with direct employment and workforce development for entrepreneurs, employees, and suppliers co-existing with wildlife. 

Our current team is comprised of three founders.

COIGNE's three co-founders have 119 years of combined experience designing big business/military operational models with a post-conflict resolution framework. Colonel (Ret.) Hamish Macdonald OBE commanded the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and a multi-national battlegroup in Bosnia with NATO. He was also an instructor at Sandhurst and the Army Staff College. His final appointment was Commander of the British Army Training Unit Suffield or BATUS in Canada. Nearly two decades ago, BATUS was utilizing technology like VR and asset tracking devices under his leadership. As advisor to the Chairman and Managing Director Chevron in Africa, he acted as an interface with national and state governments to develop community models such as promoting community enterprises, youth employment and environmental sustainability. Brigadier (Ret.) Chris Holtom CBE led the British Army’s Intelligence Corps and the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre at Chicksands. Chris designed the information process model for the Chevron Nigeria Security Liaison Unit and developed software for the Security Information Network Centre for Shell Nigeria based on the intelligence process. He designed our COIGNE Risk Management System. I offer three decades of experience in wildlife conservation, entrepreneurship, and technology. I have worked extensively across six continents – from startups and business schools to government ministries and NGOs. I started my career as a youth environmental activist and established a global track record in creating and leading campaigns, legislation, organizations, and movements with non-traditional stakeholder engagement models and early adopter technology. Our multi-generational team has multifaceted work and living experience with our target market.

COIGNE operates from a position of competitive advantage due to our regional saturation strategy and unique funding model. It is a revenue-based investing approach. We will provide loans ($200K-$1.5M) in return for a profit-sharing percentage for a set time period. Community-owned enterprises will produce financial returns for COIGNE (7% or more ROI target) and will link to 15+ SDG enhancements, 10% or more reduction in wildlife crime, VPSHR compliance, species protection, and ESG criteria. COIGNE will leverage national governments proactively due to breadth of community stakeholders and commercial entities -- thereby building synergies and shared objectives while reducing vulnerability to corrupt practices. It changes the foreign aid-driven conservation paradigm (and traditional exit strategy) to foster generational wealth transfer and end-to-end, local supply chains supported by COIGNE's interlinked entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our competitive edge is our proprietary COIGNE Risk Management System which offers a deep understanding of the players, their agendas, and links while monitoring and measuring: (a) pivot for interaction of security, intelligence, operations, and communications; (b) future points of friction and pitch points on delivery; (c) current activity of portfolio and operating environment; (d) real-time risk assessments; (e) ROI target performance; and (f) recommended policy and actions. Our database and tech-enabled tools operate a transparent, systematic process that is independent, auditable, and accountable to both investors and investees. COIGNE monitors and measures delivery as well as manages stakeholder expectations. This is commercial activity whereby African communities can take control of their environment, harness natural capital assets, and make conservation durable.

COIGNE is at the start of our journey, which has only become more complex in a post-COVID-19 world. An opportunity to learn from and contribute as a Solver would be a game-changer for COIGNE in our fundraising goals. Our financial modeling, investment mechanics, and social impact theses could be further refined and uniquely supported by Solve. Nine months of MIT-backed support from the Solve staff and community would be incredible in helping us to refine our stakeholder metrics, structure requirements, and pipeline development. We would also benefit from Solve's technical expertise as we scale-up our risk management tools to deploy AI rules and data capture for the operating environment and our database development for COIGNE's high-risk, complex market. Each of the Solve Challenges align with COIGNE's values toward community-based revenue streams, meaningful livelihoods, financial accountability, and local ownership of care in human-wildlife conflict zones. We would be grateful to join a diverse group of like-minded leaders united by social change embracing impact technology. COIGNE is seeking best practices methodology, peer networking, mentorship, investors, and strategic frameworks to guide our evolving work and build credibility with our target population. 

Vodafone is an aspirational brand in Africa's endangered conservation regions and could thrive in the COIGNE context. Vodafone is vital for our target market to work and learn remotely; link producers and importers for produce; and power COIGNE's portfolio. Vodafone is an ideal partner (from Group and operating companies to country foundations). As part of the global network of foundations, Vodafone Americas Foundation invests in meaningful social impact at the local community level. COIGNE loves Vodafone's themes of Human Dignity, Strong Voices, Fulfilling Potential, and Economic Vitality as guideposts for investing in female founders in rural Africa. As a female founder and wildlife conservationist, a gender lens is integral to our model. In a 2019 United Nations Security Council open debate, only 5 out of 75 UN Member States recognized gender considerations as important in responding to climate-related security risks. Women's leadership is key to tackling climate-conflict traps, wildlife crime, and natural resources-related corruption. Girls are part of the generation which will break the cycle of environmental degradation, habit loss, and wildlife corruption. It is rare to find female wildlife rangers -- and even more difficult to find a female-owned eco-resort. Women are on the front line in COIGNE's target market. As IUCN reported this year, climate change is leading to increased violence against women -- from power imbalances and illiteracy to child marriage and human trafficking. As Senegal's new startup laws reflect, there is growing support to boost female-led businesses in fields such as mobile banking and sustainable agriculture. 

Working-age adults residing in Africa's rural conservation zones lack permanent employment and enterprise-ownership to break the cycle of generational poverty, foreign aid handouts, and wildlife crime. The GM Prize on Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship would help COIGE to build wildlife-enabled economies to foster generational wealth transfer in human-wildlife conflict zones. COIGNE will invest in local and indigenous solutions to wildlife protection, climate mitigation, food security, and supply chain sustainability for communities vulnerable to environmental degradation, commercial exploitation, and natural resources-related corruption. Furthermore, GM would be an invaluable partner to our emerging environmental patient capital vehicle based on Africa-based manufacturing, environmental initiatives, philanthropy, and defense product innovations. GM could help enable community-led enterprises in conservation regions across Africa to deliver an interconnected, entrepreneurial ecosystem at scale with market-based incentives for human behavioral adaptions toward the illicit wildlife trade (e.g., prevention versus consumption). The $75K prize would be used exclusively on pipeline development. This may include but is not limited to: field visits, surveys, government-hosted site visits, and prospect investee business plan development with coaching and technical assistance.

COIGNE has a proprietary, AI-enabled risk management system that has been a standalone service for nine years in Kenya and Nigeria -- including 27 wildlife conservancies and a some security projects for commercial clients. At COIGNE, our Risk Management System is portfolio-focused to monitor and mitigate frictions, agendas, stakeholders, conflicts, and trends across Africa. Our COIGNE delivery model specializes in highly complex and volatile environments with proven processes, training modules, and an IT platform to manage risk and reduce vulnerability in ever-changing work conditions. My co-founders (ex-military, ex-intelligence) built a web-based platform together with synthesized data about the illegal wildlife trade for customers in low-capacity, complex operating environments. This software innovation was a 2016 Global Prizewinner of the USAID-funded Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, whereby I served as Lead Scale Advisor. Technology is not going to solve conservation’s biggest challenges, as it is only part of the toolbox. But, COIGNE was born out of an assertion that wildlife technology (and conservation as a whole) belongs in the hands of communities. At COIGNE, we aim to invest in indigenous communities that are leading and deploying commercial projects that meet sustainable development, environmental, and ethics criteria. To improve the lives of individuals and communities in human-wildlife conflict zones across Africa, COIGNE is passionate about: (1) emerging AI (e.g., animal facial recognition, algorithms); (2) Big Data (e.g., game theory, cloud-based machine learning, citizen science, deep learning systems); and (3) emerging wildlife tech (e.g., hand-held DNA scanners, next generation camera traps, LoRaWAN animal collars). We are also exploring blockchain applications for our future portfolio investments (e.g., illegal activity tracking, supply chain verification, provenance, sustainable resource management, smart contract, time-stamped carbon credits, real-time distribution and access to natural resources and internet connectivity). We would use the AI For Humanity Prize for the buildout of our COIGNE Risk Management System requirements. The $200K would enable COIGNE to: update components, integrate data capture, purchase hardware, conduct risk analysis, and build-out our assessment to deploy AI rules.

COIGNE (Community Oriented Investment Generating New Enterprise) is a patient capital vehicle enabling funding for locally owned enterprises in endangered conservation regions. It is scalable, for-profit community investment designed to invert the global conservation model with a proactive, community-led approach that pre-empts large donor funding. COIGNE changes the foreign aid-driven conservation paradigm with a focus on keeping profits in the hands of indigenous communities to foster generational wealth transfer and sustainable supply chain growth in rural Africa. Using a revenue-based investing approach, we will provide loan financing to commercial entities in return for profit-sharing for a set time period. The aim is to rollout COIGNE by country, then saturate regionally with an interconnected portfolio of locally-owned projects based on scalability and commercial potential for both communities and governments. Supported by COIGNE, communities will deliver an entrepreneurial ecosystem to increase direct employment and workforce development. At COIGNE, we believe that conservation belongs in the hands of local and indigenous communities. Future Planet Capital's ethos and mission are closely aligned with COIGNE's intent to deliver breakthrough returns and meaningful impact in human-wildlife conflict zones tackling complex challenges such as climate change,  security, and sustainable growth. Access to and expertise from Future Planet Capital's investor-led, co-invest platform would be tremendous for building our unique hybrid fund model. Further, our tech-enabled COIGNE Risk Management System may prove beneficial to Future Planet investors and partners. We would use the $200K Prize to support our infrastructure requirements (e.g., fiduciary oversight and compliance support) and pipeline development needs (e.g., loan and profit sharing agreements, supply chain/supplier engagement, and on-site audits).