Origins

It all began with a search for a more meaningful way of doing research, a gut-feel experiment and a challenge to the established research traditions prevalent in South Africa and other developing markets… Today CDI and its partners operate an ongoing contextual, community-based participative research program, providing holistic insights into the lives of people living in under-developed areas, their communities, the ways in which they operate, their capabilities, conversion factors and agency as well as the markets they can realistically sustain.The initial concept of the contextual, community-based research program was started as an incubation project offered by the company Infusion (www.in-fusion.co.za). Investment in the development of this program was driven by Infusion’s realisation that the best information in the country is proprietary information and that very little appropriate information is available to other stakeholders – be it government, civil society or small business. Infusion believed that something had to be done about these information shortages in order to optimise development. As such, the vision was always to address the lack of reliable information available on under-developed markets through alternative research methodologies.