Engagement Protocol

How Afrimintel works alongside (not in replacement of) DFI and institutional capital-allocator processes. This page articulates the engagement structure that institutional partners can request, the scope and deliverables, the confidentiality framework, and what each side gets from the engagement.

The shadow-screen pilot is published as a standing offer. Any DFI, multilateral, sovereign-investment-vehicle, pension-and-infrastructure-fund, strategic-capital allocator, or comparable institutional capital partner with a real African mining or critical-minerals-corridor deal in screening can request a pilot. The terms below are the published terms; they apply equally regardless of who asks. Bandwidth is the binding constraint: the platform can support a small number of pilots concurrently. Pilots are accepted in the order requests arrive, scope-permitting.

What the pilot is

A 30-day no-fee shadow-screen observation engagement structured around one real deal at the institutional partner's choice — typically an asset, corridor exposure, or capital-allocation question already in the institution's screening or pre-mandate pipeline.

The engagement runs in parallel to the institution's internal screening process. Afrimintel produces a parallel diligence artefact — a dossier of the same shape as the four published case studies (Kabanga Pre-FID, Manono Disputed-Tenure, Loulo-Gounkoto Post-Settlement, Lobito Corridor Infrastructure) — covering the institution's chosen target. The deliverable is structured for the institution's mandate (DFI mandate-fit overlay, country-risk composite, decision-shape framing, comparable assets, stress-test framework) and arrives within the 30-day window.

Both diligence artefacts — the institution's internal one and the Afrimintel parallel one — are then comparable. The institution decides what was useful, what was redundant, what was missing, what the platform got right or wrong. That comparison is the point of the pilot.

The engagement structure

Scope

One asset, corridor, or decision. Institution's choice. Live deal screening preferred over historical or hypothetical cases — the value of the comparison is highest when the deal is real and the institution has parallel internal work in flight.
Public-source diligence only. Afrimintel produces from public primary sources (operator filings, government disclosures, multilateral databases, peer-reviewed literature, audited press releases). The platform does not request access to the institution's internal data, confidential counterparty information, or non-public deal terms.
30-day delivery window. Counted from engagement-start date to dossier delivery. Engagement-start is the date both parties confirm scope and the chosen target.
One revision cycle. The institution provides feedback on the delivered dossier; Afrimintel publishes one revision incorporating the feedback. Further revisions are out of pilot scope.

Deliverables

A full-shape Afrimintel dossier on the chosen target, structured around the seven-to-nine-question framework appropriate to the decision shape (pre-FID screening, disputed-tenure, post-settlement re-entry, corridor exposure, or other). Includes country-risk composite, decision-shape framing, comparable assets where applicable, stress-test framework, DFI mandate-fit overlay where applicable.
Field-level provenance on every numeric and factual claim, citing primary sources with dates per the published Quality Standard's three-state model.
Audit log entry in the platform's public Audit Log recording the engagement, the scope (without naming the institution unless explicit consent is given), and the dossier publication. The institution-facing version of the dossier is the deliverable; the public audit-log entry is the discipline record.
Reconciliation note from the institution's analyst documenting where the Afrimintel dossier added value, where it duplicated internal work, where it diverged from internal conclusions and why. This note is the institution's, not the platform's; it is the institution's reference document for evaluating platform fit.

Confidentiality

NDA available on request. Standard mutual-NDA template provided by the platform; institution-supplied NDA accepted with reasonable terms.
Institution name not published without explicit consent. The pilot can run anonymously throughout. The platform's audit-log entry records "institutional pilot engagement, [decision-shape category]" without identifying the partner.
Internal deal information stays internal. The platform does not request, receive, or process the institution's confidential deal data — only public-source material.
The dossier itself is the institution's to use. Afrimintel retains the right to publish the dossier as a case study only with explicit named consent from the institution post-engagement, and only on the institution's terms (timing, redaction of any specifics the institution prefers not to surface, named or anonymous attribution per institution preference).

What each side gets

The institution gets	Afrimintel gets
A comparable diligence artefact on a live deal, produced by an external platform with auditable provenance, that can be evaluated against internal screening output.	A documented test of platform-institutional fit on a real deal, run under the institution's own conditions.
A documented test of the platform's fit-for-purpose against the institution's actual workflow, mandate, and decision-shape — not against a generic illustration.	Feedback from a senior institutional analyst on what the platform got right, missed, or framed wrongly. The feedback is operational input to the platform's roadmap.
A published reference (the platform's audit log entry; if consented, the case-study publication) demonstrating the institution's diligence process is rigorous enough to engage external comparators.	If the institution consents post-engagement to public attribution, a named case study referencing the engagement at the institution's chosen level of detail. Counterparty Extension discipline maintained: no claim is made without explicit institutional consent.
No commercial obligation. No fee. No follow-on commitment. The pilot ends at 30 days regardless of outcome.	Bounded scope (one deal, 30 days, one revision) so engagement load is sustainable across multiple parallel pilots without compromising the published Quality Standard discipline.

What the pilot is NOT

The pilot does not replace the institution's internal screening, credit memo, IE commission, ESG review, sovereign credit analysis, legal opinion, or any other element of formal due diligence. Afrimintel produces a parallel screening artefact; the institution's internal process remains its own.

The pilot does not produce introductions to operators, sponsors, governments, or any other counterparty named in the dossier. The platform's Counterparty Extension discipline applies: Afrimintel does not introduce, broker, or facilitate engagement with any third party named in research output.

The pilot does not produce political risk insurance underwriting, lender-side debt-sizing, intercreditor structuring, term sheet drafting, regulatory opinion, or any formal financial-advisory output. These remain the institution's own work or the work of its appointed advisers.

The pilot does not produce predictions of arbitration outcomes, election results, sovereign credit transitions, or any other forward-looking event the platform has explicitly published as outside scope under the Quality Standard.

How to request a pilot

An institutional partner can request a pilot by emailing nikesh@afrimintel.com with the following information:

Institution name and the senior contact making the request
The chosen target (asset / corridor / decision question) and decision shape
The institution's preferred timing for engagement-start (Afrimintel responds with concrete pilot-start date based on current pilot pipeline)
NDA preference (Afrimintel template, institution template, or run without NDA)
Post-engagement attribution preference (anonymous in audit log only; named case study if mutually agreed; no public reference at all)

Afrimintel responds within five business days with: pilot-start date, scope confirmation, NDA flow, a one-page engagement letter setting out the terms above, and a single-point-of-contact at the platform (currently the editorial responsibility owner: Nikesh Patel).

The shadow-screen pilot is a standing offer.

Bandwidth is the constraint. Pilots are accepted in the order requests arrive.

Request a pilot

Why a no-fee pilot

The pilot is structured no-fee for two reasons. First, the demonstrated test of platform-institutional fit on a real deal is more valuable to the platform than the pilot fee would be. The honest test of "does this platform improve a real capital decision" cannot be bought — it has to be observed in operation, in an institutional setting, on a real deal. The platform is paying the cost of the demonstration in operational time; the institution is paying the cost in analyst-time-to-evaluate-the-output and in the meta-cost of running comparison work.

Second, the no-fee structure is the cleanest possible Counterparty Extension position. There is no commercial relationship between the platform and the institution during the pilot; there is no claim that the institution is a customer, partner, or commissioning party. The platform's Counterparty Extension discipline requires that no commercial-relationship language is used until explicit institutional consent. The no-fee pilot structure makes that discipline structurally trivial to maintain.

What happens after the pilot

Three outcomes are possible at 30 days, and each is published in the audit log:

Outcome	What it means
The institution finds the platform useful and engages commercially.	The institution and Afrimintel move to a commercial engagement on terms appropriate to the institution's mandate, scale, and decision context. Commercial structure is bespoke at the current build stage; published subscription pricing is not in effect during closed beta. Pilot dossier becomes the first deliverable in the commercial engagement. Audit-log entry records the transition; case-study publication is on the institution's terms.
The institution finds the platform useful but commercial fit is not yet right.	The institution holds the dossier for internal use. No commercial commitment made. The platform retains the option to refer to the engagement anonymously in the audit log; named reference requires explicit consent. The institution can request a second pilot at a future date if circumstances change.
The institution determines the platform is not a fit.	The pilot ends without commercial follow-on. The institution retains the dossier for internal reference. The platform receives the institution's reconciliation note as feedback. Audit-log entry records the engagement and outcome anonymously. The platform's roadmap incorporates the feedback.

All three outcomes are equally valid. The pilot is structured so the institution faces no pressure to engage commercially regardless of platform output quality. That structural neutrality is what makes the pilot a real test.

Operational note

The platform is currently operating with single-editor capacity (editorial responsibility: Nikesh Patel) and is scaling editorial bandwidth through the role architecture published on the about page. Pilot capacity is bounded by editorial throughput and the published Quality Standard's primary-source verification discipline. The platform will be transparent at request time about current pilot pipeline and expected start dates. Where pilot demand exceeds capacity, the platform will publish that fact and queue requests in date-of-request order.

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