RIAHSAH Co. is a mission-driven enterprise working at the intersection of people, systems, research, and markets.
Our work focuses on how complex systems function in practice, and how organisations can engage with them more effectively in conditions of constraint and change.
RIAHSAH was founded on a persistent observation: the challenge facing most communities and organisations in Africa is rarely about the people. It is about the systems surrounding them.
Arsène Ngombe, founder and Chief Enabler of RIAHSAH Co., came to that conclusion through two decades of direct experience across government, civil society, research, and transformation work in Africa.
He began his career in the Cabinets of two Ministers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, working on policy formulation for institutional reform, decentralisation, and regional cooperation. These were his first encounters with a recurring reality: that well-designed policies, implemented by capable people with genuine political will, could still fail to shift the conditions they were designed to address. Systems, their incentives, inherited structures, and relationships, shaped outcomes more powerfully than any single intervention.
He examined that problem in a Masters in Development Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, looking at informal economies, land markets, and whether market-led urban regeneration could improve inner-city living conditions without excluding the populations it intended to serve. The more he looked, the more he found that outcomes were shaped less by individual effort than by the systems and institutions surrounding people.
That question led him deeper into practice: livelihoods and economic building work across municipalities in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and KwaZulu-Natal; a research project mapping peace infrastructures across 24 African countries for the African Union Peace and Security Council; network building across 40 countries in the creative economy; and public interest programme management in health, overseeing a Community Health Worker Programme across 36 facilities in 7 sub-Saharan African countries, with policy outputs adopted by Ministries of Health in Zimbabwe.
What he witnessed repeatedly across these contexts was ambition and capability held back by environments not designed to support them: inaccessible financing, disconnected training, fragmented programmes unable to learn from each other or adapt. Capable people, committed organisations, and genuine resources producing limited or fragile results because the structural conditions surrounding them were not designed to support sustained change. The challenge was never motivational. It was structural.
When the COVID-19 pandemic brought funding cuts and organisational restructuring, Arsène further reflected on the question that had been forming across his entire career: how do we influence change in the systems that people are working in?
RIAHSAH Co. was built to answer it, as a deliberate attempt to work at the level of systems themselves and not just the projects within them. A defining characteristic of the approach is that, beyond systems diagnosis, the work also focuses on creating and strengthening the conditions that enable value to circulate within those systems, connecting actors, strengthening relationships, and building the coordination mechanisms through which resources, knowledge, and opportunity can flow more effectively.
This brought together research, foresight, facilitation, and applied learning within a single organisation. Over time, these experiences evolved into Systems Informed Foresight®, RIAHSAH's proprietary methodology that integrates systems thinking and foresight into a structured process linking analysis, strategy, and adaptive action.
To connect systems, futures, and people across market and social contexts, enabling more resilient, equitable, and transformative pathways for businesses, individuals, organisations, and institutions.
A world of sustainable, inclusive, and equitable systems, spanning markets, businesses, institutions, and communities, where collaboration, learning, and innovation allow people and organisations to thrive in an uncertain future.
Adaptability
We build continuous learning and flexibility into everything we do, because the systems we work in are always changing.
Curiosity
We ask better questions and stay open to discovering what we did not expect, approaching every context with genuine interest.
Confidence
We work with conviction in systems-informed approaches, in our partners' capabilities, and in the possibility of meaningful change.
Optimism
We focus on what is possible, helping the organisations we work with move toward better futures.
Hope
We believe things can be better, and that the commitment to making them better is worth sustaining over the long term.
RIAHSAH operates through a core leadership and coordination team responsible for vision, governance, quality assurance, and strategic partnerships. This team is complemented by a wider network of trusted associates and collaborators who contribute specialised expertise across facilitation, research, design, programme delivery, and organisational support.
As a systems change organisation, we intentionally work across a wide range of expertise within our network, recognising that meaningful systems change requires a multidisciplinary approach. This is why RIAHSAH operates as a networked social enterprise, enabling us to bring together diverse perspectives and capabilities, while remaining lean, responsive, and grounded in high-quality delivery.
Network contributors are engaged through clear scopes of work, professional agreements, and accountability mechanisms to ensure consistency and rigour across all engagements.
RIAHSAH Co. is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a registered presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We currently operate across East and Southern Africa, with expansion plans into West and Central Africa.