ABOUT US | Nextrade

WHAT WE DO

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Nextrade Group helps governments, multilateral development banks, and Fortune 500s with the mission to enable trade through technology.

Our vision is a world where trade flows frictionless and carbonless end-to-end, and where any business, anywhere can easily export and import and grow through trade.

Our mission is to harness the power of trade and technology to accelerate economic growth and raise incomes and well-being around the world.

Nextrade Group has been hired by more than 50 clients in six continents, most of them many times, to ideate, architect, and build policy-relevant data products, analytics, business solutions, and policy reforms to accelerate the use of such technologies as ecommerce, blockchain, and artificial intelligence in the global trade ecosystem. We work on all types of trade: containerized trade, parcel-based trade and ecommerce, trade in services, tourism, and digital services.

We have also created and built seven global public-private partnerships with leading companies, international institutions, and governments, aimed to further the use of technologies and standards to facilitate trade and ecommerce, including USAID's first PPP in ecommerce development, Alliance for eTrade Development I and II, with altogether 16 companies; and the Prosper Africa Tech for Trade Alliance with 20 companies and US Government's Prosper Africa initiative; and UN eTrade for All Initiative with 30+ global companies and agencies.

We stand out by grounding all our work in data and develop for our clients innovative data and analytics that enable them to sharpen their service for their own clients. Data and analytics make up two-thirds of our work.

Our analytics and databases include, for example, E-Exporters to track SMEs’ crossborder ecommerce use and digital transformation; Carbonless CommerceTM to track carbon emissions and sustainability initiatives in the trade ecosystem and among SMEs; Smartrade Index to track the digitization of the world’s free trade zones, ports, and customs; and Digital Policy Pulse to monitor the adoption of digital policies conducive to trade in each world region.

Nextrade Engine translates our data to policy-relevant and programmatic insight, and leverages monitoring and evaluation data to enhance our impact.

Our selected clients include the World Bank Group, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, MasterCard, Fedex, UPS, eBay, PayPal, Visa, IBM, Magento, Google, TradeKey, Alibaba Group, U.S. Agency for International Development, AusAID, New Zealand Ministry Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), U.S. State Department, U.S. Commerce Department, UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN ECLAC), UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP), PIFS, Palladium Group, OCO Global, DAI, Carana Corporation, Korefusion, Central American Regional Center for the Promotion of MSMEs (Cenpromype), Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, European Institute for eCommerce Management, ConnectAmericas, South African Institute for International Affairs, Brookings Institution, Center for a New American Security, Bush Institute, and Peterson Institute for International Economics. We have also collaborated with the World Economic Forum.

We focus all our work on enabling businesses that trade; thus we have wide wingspan of expertise across issues in the trade cycle, such as crossborder payments, trade finance, global and local logistics, and sales and marketing.

We work at all levels needed to make trade flow: at 30,000 feet on trade and digital policy reforms, on ground zero on building and operationalizing pilots, and in between on architecting new business solutions and development programs.

We are leveraging disruptive technologies in our work, and have since 2018 used AI to improve the way economic development is measured and designed. Nextrade has a new AI practice to further solutions to the most intractable questions in international trade and economic development, at the most granular subnational levels.

We are idea-people that work best on a blank canvas. Nextrade is known to deliver to our clients groundbreaking ideas and new strategic partnerships that help clients create entirely new lines of business and services to their own clients. We do not sit and wait for clients to come: we think 4-5 years ahead, drive the agenda, and define what clients should focus on next. Our sweetspot is to be the client's R&D and strategy department - in fact, much our work with our clients has first been ideated and developed at Nextrade. We, in short, are in the "Next". Our job is to take our clients there.

Nextrade’s work is creative, rigorous, applied, and actionable. Our technical expertise includes quantitative and qualitative data collection, management, and analysis; audience survey design and fielding; construction of dashboards and data visualizations; statistical and econometric analysis; and development of data pipes, databases, indices, and other analytics based on satellite imagery, social media data, GIS, and AI and machine learning. We have managed complex, data-driven analytical projects, public-private partnerships, and long work streams with senior staff in client organizations; and in several occasions presented our findings on clients’ behalf to minister and CEO-level policy and business leaders worldwide.