After the grant-giving years, we chose to design and run our own projects, to control the agenda and own the outcomes. Across the next seven years we built schools, dams, clinics, farms and our first businesses, learning by doing across five pillars of work.
Five years of grant-giving taught us a great deal, and frustrated us in one respect: we had little control over how projects were implemented.
So we began to design and deliver our own work. Learning-by-doing and depth of intervention became the hallmarks of this era. We started in education, in the most rural and underserved parts of Ethiopia and Somaliland, then followed the problem outward: when ECE children lost ground in weak primary schools, we built our own; when graduates lacked trades, we built a vocational centre. The same logic carried us into water, health and agriculture, and in 2019, into our first businesses under Pharo Ventures.
Our first state-of-the-art boarding school, officially opened in February 2020. Its inaugural class of 25 graduated in October 2022, every student college-bound for courses from aviation to medicine.
Opened in October 2020 with 168 children in a rented facility, it grew to 447 students and upgraded to secondary level by 2022, topping the regional Grade 8 results.
Consolidated and renovated the Somaliland schools. Pharo Secondary Sheikh stood out in the national examination, where a Pharo student took the highest mark in all of Somaliland.
From a 2015 pilot in seven public schools to 18 ECD centres reaching more than 1,000 children, plus a co-authored national ECE curriculum. A randomised controlled trial began in Berbera in 2022.
A six-month literacy and numeracy course for mothers of ECD children, with 182 enrolled in 2022 and 22 continuing into practical skills training such as sewing.
A first cohort of 50 graduated in solar & electrical installation and painting & decorating, each with an internship on completion, including three female solar graduates in a male-dominated trade.
Through the SEEP programme, upgraded public schools with new classroom blocks, toilets and water-harvesting structures, improving the learning environment for more than 5,000 children.
A fully integrated hafir dam built by Pharo Construction, with geomembrane lining, troughs and solar pumping. It pioneered safer ‘battered excavation’ and serves 465 households.
A rural dam providing clean and adequate water for 247 households through the year, particularly during the dry season.
Completed in December 2022, it filled to its full 1,260 cubic-metre capacity within weeks of the 2023 rains, serving almost 300 households.
The first Pharo berkad in Somaliland, a roofed underground store holding 432 cubic metres of clean water for people, with a further 51 cubic metres for livestock.
Three deep wells lifted town water coverage by around 8 per cent, while an upgrade took Assosa Hospital from water trucked in twice a week to a 24-hour uninterrupted supply.
Eleven shallow wells developed from 2018. By 2020, 83–95 per cent of participants reached an improved water source within 30 minutes, up from 59 per cent at baseline.
Opened in June 2022, the only advanced diagnostic centre of its kind in the region. It served 5,318 people in its first months and began surfacing the silent spread of non-communicable disease.
Performance-based supply of consumables, quality-assured items and oxygen concentrators to strengthen intensive-care capacity at the regional hospital.
To complement the regional pandemic response, the Foundation supplied protective equipment and oxygen to the BGRS COVID-19 task force.
A Farmer Field School model reaching 681 households in crop production, poultry and beekeeping. Maize yields rose roughly fourfold against baseline, and the area’s first farmers’ cooperative union was formed.
Three cohorts, 176 farmers, trained in drip irrigation and good agricultural practice since 2018, with demonstration plots and a greenhouse for new technology.
Ten women trained in fodder production and animal husbandry, each given seed and a loan to buy improved breeds to fatten and sell at peak season.
The fifth pillar’s first business, employing 55 people and building schools, homes and dams. It led the reconstruction of the Waaheen market in Hargeisa after the 2022 fire.
A ready-mix concrete business competing on quality at a lower price than incumbents, supplying the Waaheen market reconstruction and the wider building boom.
A sesame and safflower oil processing plant, the venture arm’s first manufacturing investment in Ethiopia, with production beginning in November 2023.
Added in 2019 as the fifth pillar, Pharo Ventures set up an impact-driven portfolio across East Africa with three aims: maximise jobs, maximise value added and reach sustainable profitability.