How to get a reliable sector note on a West African market in under a week

The problem

An investment fund receives an opportunity in a West African market. The decision must be made quickly — three weeks, sometimes less. The problem is not the lack of information: it is its accessibility.

Consulting firm reports cost €15,000 to €50,000 and take 4-6 weeks. Development bank country notes are free but too macroeconomic to inform a specific sectoral decision. Market studies published by chambers of commerce are often 2-3 years old. The result: the investment team rebuilds an analysis in-house, with whatever resources they have, synthesizing disparate sources — a craft effort that takes time and whose reliability depends on who does it.

Yet the data exists. Recent theses, defended at universities across the continent, analyze hundreds of West African economic sectors every year with a level of detail that consulting reports cannot match. The problem is that they are not structured for decision-making.

What the research shows

A recent thesis in management sciences, defended at the University of Lomé, studied the impact of psychosocial capital on the strategic capabilities of entrepreneurs in Togo (Afangbégnon, 2023). This work — representative of hundreds of others — illustrates what academic research brings to a sectoral analysis that standard reports do not provide:

• A snapshot of the local entrepreneurial fabric at a fine granularity (by sector, by gender, by financing type) that national surveys do not publish.
• Data on the real constraints faced by economic operators: access to credit, regulatory framework as experienced, adaptation strategies in the face of market failures.
• An analysis of informal value chains that official statistics systematically underestimate.

This information exists in research — but it is scattered across multiple disciplines (economics, management, law, sociology), published in theses that investment professionals do not consult, and not synthesized in a decision-ready format.

What this means in practice

For a fund or firm that needs to produce a sector note urgently, the gain is twofold:

1. Save time on the state of the art. Instead of commissioning a field study (3 weeks, high budget) or manually compiling heterogeneous sources (1 week, variable reliability), mobilize existing research — already written, peer-reviewed, grounded in the field.
2. Access data that standard reports do not contain. Recent theses include field surveys, interviews with local actors, and original quantitative data that official publications do not capture — especially on the informal sector, which represents 40-60% of GDP in the region.

A sector note that mobilizes recent academic research can be produced in 5 days instead of 3-6 weeks, with a level of detail and data freshness superior to generic reports.

Why this information remains underexploited

West African theses are accessible online (HAL, theses.fr, university archives). But they are not designed for decision-making: their vocabulary is academic, their structure follows a thesis format (not a briefing note), and their dispersion across multiple disciplines and institutions makes their exploitation non-trivial.

The work Lektaris does is precisely this: select, synthesize, and structure recent academic research to produce actionable sector notes, with verifiable sources, on the sector and territory that matter to you.

Further reading

• Full research: Female entrepreneurship in Togo
• Tax revenue mobilization in developing countries
• Monetary independence in West Africa
• Discover our custom sector report service

Academic source cited: Ayélé Afangbégnon. Impact of psychosocial capital on the entrepreneurial potential and strategic capabilities of the Togolese woman entrepreneur. Management Sciences. University of Lomé, 2023. hal.science/tel-05546786