The Lab's programmes are not siloed. A reader who reads only the finance programme will miss half of the argument; the signature methodology the Lab applies across programmes is what makes the finance analysis and the electrification analysis mutually informative, and the payment-rail questions that animate the finance work are as consequential for the water programme as for anything else. This overview is written to make the cross-programme structure legible before the reader dives into any single programme.

§ 1

The three active programmes

Each of the three is substantial, each has its own research agenda, and each is published separately with its own deep-dive entries.

Programme 01Finance & Payment Systems
The central question: how do closed-loop mobile-money architectures reproduce financial-exclusion patterns even after account-level inclusion has been achieved, and what would durable interoperability at the payment layer actually require? Five thematic strands: closed-loop payment systems; interoperability-layer design; cross-border remittance as infrastructure; regulatory frameworks; developer-community formation around open-standards payment infrastructure. Full programme →
Programme 02Electrification & E-Mobility Transitions
The central question: how do electric two-wheelers actually cross the affordability threshold in Kenya's ICE-dominated motorcycle market, which of the BRW strategies each industry player is pursuing, and what does the transition tell us about infrastructure change more broadly? Five thematic strands: financing architectures; battery-swap infrastructure; charging and grid interaction; regulatory policy; comparative view across African markets. Full programme →
Programme 03Water Access Systems
The central question: what do the financing and payment lessons from mobile money imply for a water sector that still runs largely on cash and caretaker-mediated distribution, and what design primitives — addressable endpoints, micropayment, portable service history — translate cleanly into the water context? Four thematic strands: informal-economy water distribution; smart-meter and IoT integration; community-level governance; the payment layer. Full programme →
§ 2

The cross-programme methodology

A reader moving between programmes will notice that the same analytical apparatus is applied in each. This is deliberate. The Lab's methodological spine is the BRW typology — a three-strategy framework for reading how new infrastructure systems navigate entrenched legacy regimes. The typology was developed through comparative case work on Kenyan electric-mobility, refined through parallel application in finance and water, and is now being extended into the adjacent frontiers.

The three strategies the typology distinguishes are:

  1. Bypass

    A niche actor proceeds around the legacy regime — constructing a parallel infrastructure that does not depend on the legacy system's chokepoints. Battery-swap networks that do not rely on the petrol-station footprint are a canonical example; mobile-money systems that do not rely on bank-branch infrastructure are another.

  2. Repurpose

    A niche actor reuses an asset, channel, or capability originally built to serve the legacy regime, redirecting it to new ends. Existing petrol-station sites adapted for charging stalls are one example; mobile-money agent networks layered above legacy retail infrastructure are another; community water-kiosk operators adapted into digital-payment nodes are a third.

  3. Weaken

    A niche actor operates against the legacy regime's lock-in directly — working to remove the barriers to entry, switching costs, or regulatory moats that keep the legacy system in place. Open-standards interoperability layers that make closed-loop systems relatively less advantageous are a canonical example; data-portability regulations are another.

The typology is not a ranking. No strategy is inherently superior; each has specific conditions under which it is the right move, and each has specific failure modes. The Lab's BRW methodology is the full analytical apparatus around the typology — the decision framework that tells a researcher or practitioner which strategy is being used, which is viable, and which is being blocked. See the methodology page for the full treatment.

§ 3

The adjacent frontiers

Two further thematic areas are visible in the Lab's operational record and are scheduled for more sustained research attention as the three active programmes mature.

Adjacent 01Climate Adaptation Finance
Scheduled for sustained attention after the current programme cycle. The Lab's working hypothesis is that fine-grained payment primitives — streaming, addressable endpoints, portable service histories — have useful application in distributed parametric-insurance payouts to climate-exposed populations, and in performance-based concessional-finance settlements where the condition of release is a measurable adaptation outcome. The hypothesis is tentative; substantive research will begin with structured interview work with climate-finance intermediaries active in East Africa and extend into prototype design only when the interview work warrants it.
Operational substrateMarine MRV
Long-running applied work, conducted through Reef Support B.V., on satellite-enabled marine monitoring, reporting, and verification in the Dutch Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Operates as operational substrate rather than as an active research programme: provides the Lab with grounding in MRV-grade data systems and an active partnership network of 30+ conservation organisations globally. A research extension into biodiversity-credit settlement is in preparation and may, in the Lab's next programme cycle, become a full research programme in its own right.
§ 4

How the programmes interact

The Lab's three active programmes are not a set of parallel tracks. They share substrate in three specific ways, and the cross-programme reading is where much of the Lab's distinctive value rests.

Shared methodology. All three programmes apply the BRW typology. The typology was initially developed in the electrification programme but has been explicitly tested and refined against the finance and water cases; each application has contributed methodological refinements back to the typology itself.

Shared payment layer. The finance programme's work on closed-loop payment systems directly informs the electrification programme (where asset-finance repayment flows through the same closed-loop rails) and the water programme (where informal-settlement water payments are increasingly routed through mobile money). The three programmes are, at the payment-layer level, analytically continuous.

Shared field site. Most of the Lab's primary fieldwork in all three programmes is conducted in Kenya, and within Kenya substantially in Nairobi and its peri-urban areas. This is not a matter of convenience — it reflects the deliberate choice that a research organisation doing serious comparative work across sectors is better served by depth in one site than by superficial coverage across many.

§ 5

Programme governance and review

Each programme is led by a principal researcher (at the Lab's current scale, this is the founder) and reviewed through three distinct mechanisms: TU Delft TPM academic supervision where applicable (notably for MSc thesis work); external expert review on specific working papers before public release; and open community review through the Lab's publication practice (readers are invited to submit corrections, counter-arguments, and replication attempts directly).

Programme reviews are conducted quarterly and result, where warranted, in explicit version updates to programme agendas and published documents. Where the Lab's view changes on a substantive matter, the change is documented in the relevant entry rather than absorbed silently into a later version.