Methodology
Five analytical strata, each a different way of knowing, each with specific blind spots. When layers converge, confidence is high. When they diverge, the divergence itself is the analysis.
Layer 1
Exchange rates, fuel prices, patronage erosion, community trust, protest signals, displacement return rates. The ground-level reality as lived, measurable, observable, and systematically divergent from official narratives.
Blind spot: Social indicators are harder to quantify than economic ones. Requires ground presence to collect. Lagging until they suddenly become leading.
Layer 2
Territorial control, displacement flows, military positioning, infrastructure status. Geography as analytical constraint: what the map reveals that the narrative conceals.
Blind spot: Maps show where, not why. Territorial analysis without political context produces false precision.
Layer 3
Active primary collection from graded networks. Factional dynamics, pre-announcement information, coalition shifts. What political actors generate before they speak publicly.
Blind spot: Source-dependent. Networks are cultivated over years and carry inherent biases. Requires rigorous grading (A1–F6) to remain useful.
Layer 4
Narrative velocity, coordination patterns, bot detection, sectarian discourse mapping. The digital layer that amplifies, distorts, or suppresses every other signal.
Blind spot: Volume is not validity. Digital sentiment reflects who is loudest, not who is right. Requires filtering for coordination and inauthentic activity.
Layer 5
Cabinet decrees, central bank circulars, legislation, judicial decisions, military orders. What the state does on paper versus what it does in practice.
Blind spot: Institutional outputs often lag political reality by weeks. Decrees are sometimes performative rather than operational.
Our principles
Five ways of knowing that test each other. No single layer is trusted alone. Confidence is earned through convergence, not consensus.
Faster than the client's own analytical cycle. The Dispatch arrives before the first meeting of the day. The Estimate lands before the weekly planning session.
In environments where official data lies, proximity is not geography. It is epistemology. We verify what others can only estimate.
We do not predict. We map scenarios, assign probabilities, and track the indicators that shift them. Always falsifiable. Always updated.
From layers to domains
The five layers describe how we collect. Convergence describes how we organise what we have collected: eight epistemically distinct domains, each holding the analytical output that the upstream strata can sustain. Layers feed domains. Domains feed the surfaces that produce our work.
The five layers and the four principles describe a methodology. The platform that operates on it is Convergence.