The firm · Strategic relationships
A specialist firm built around methodological depth.
Future Lab is an independent strategic innovation and venture-building firm operating in African markets. We work with organisations on three problems: where to find value already in the business, how to grow into new capability, and what to change when the existing model is running out of road.
The firm
What we are. Who we serve.
We work with organisations operating at scale in African markets. That includes commercial organisations with substantial reach, impact-oriented organisations whose mandate intersects directly with the regions where we work, and the funders and grantmakers who support both. We are deliberately structured for engagement depth: a senior team, the Mavens Network of specialists, and a small set of strategic relationships invited at the firm's discretion.
We are building the firm that takes African market complexity as the operating environment its work is designed for. The methodology is built here, for here.
Strategic relationships
Sankofa Lab and Innovation Village Group.
We hold a small number of strategic relationships with independent organisations whose capability or ecosystem position complements our own. Each carries its own leadership, brand, and IP. We convene them where an engagement requires what they bring. Two are named publicly today.
Sankofa Lab is an integrated platform built to close Africa's research-to-market gap. Its capability spans applied deep tech R&D, IP management, product and platform engineering, and market access, structured as a system rather than a service portfolio. sankofalab.africa →
Where our engagements need technology delivery, including the Product & Platform Studio, technology-based ventures, and engineering capability against African operating conditions, Sankofa Lab is the relationship we work alongside. Both firms build, vet, and maintain the Mavens Network, our specialist expertise platform, and both draw on it for client engagements.
Innovation Village Group is a pan-African innovation infrastructure operator, founded in Uganda in 2015. The group's ventures include MoTIV, Innovation Village Hub, and Innovation District. Future Lab was incubated within IVG from 2021 and spun out as an independent firm in May 2026.
IVG refers community ventures from across the group into our Venture Market Access Programme. We may co-host events and challenges at IVG hubs and draw on hub infrastructure for client-facing work under commercial arrangements. Read the heritage → innovationvillage.africa →
Other strategic relationships are held privately and surfaced only when an engagement makes the relationship relevant. New strategic relationships are added by invitation only; the path for organisations and individuals seeking to contribute to engagements is the Vantage Partner Programme, Mavens Network or Practitioners route.
Start a working session.
A working session is how engagement begins: listening before recommending, scoped to the situation, useful regardless of whether further work follows.
Start a working session →