Decision Intelligence
Decision Intelligence: The Future Of Market Research In Africa
By Yannick Lefang
On 5th September 2025, Marketing Africa hosted its 3rd Marketers’ Night of the year at the Nairobi Hospital Convention Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. The event brought together marketing professionals to exchange insights, build networks, and explore emerging strategies shaping the industry. Among the highlights of the evening was a presentation by Kasi Insight titled“ Decision Intelligence: The Future of Market Research.” The session captured the attention of participants by introducing a transformative shift in how businesses can approach data, moving away from reactive strategies and toward a future defined by foresight and proactive decision-making.
From Looking Back to Looking Ahead
For decades, analytics has been rooted in hindsight. Descriptive analytics sought to answer the question“ What happened?” while diagnostic analytics pushed further to ask,“ Why did it happen?” These methods provided valuable insights, but they often left organizations reacting to problems only after the damage was done. Marketers, as a result, were frequently one step behind, responding to declining sales, customer churn, or shifts in consumer sentiment when the opportunity to act had already passed.
Decision Intelligence shifts this dynamic. It adds two critical layers to the analytical process. Predictive analytics asks,“ What is likely to happen?” while prescriptive analytics addresses,“ How can we make it happen?” Together, these two approaches transform data from a backward-looking record into a forward-looking tool that drives action.
The difference in application is striking. Instead of analysing why sales dropped last quarter, a company using Decision Intelligence can forecast a potential dip in the coming months and launch targeted
For decades, analytics has been rooted in hindsight. Descriptive analytics sought to answer the question“ What happened?” while diagnostic analytics pushed further to ask,“ Why did it happen?” These methods provided valuable insights, but they often left organizations reacting to problems only after the damage was done. campaigns to prevent it. This ability to anticipate challenges and intervene before they unfold provides a powerful competitive advantage. In Africa, where markets are highly dynamic and consumer behaviour changes rapidly, such foresight is not just useful but essential.
Kasi Insight’ s Transformation into a Decision Intelligence Platform
The story of Kasi Insight is itself a case study in transformation. Founded a decade ago by Yannick Lefang, the company began as a modest research outfit focused on providing snapshots of African markets to fill glaring information gaps. Yannick’ s background as an engineer and banker, combined with his experiences living and working in Africa, North America, and Europe, gave him a unique perspective on how African realities were often absent from global decision-making. He founded Kasi Insight with a clear purpose: to give African brand builders and decisionmakers the clarity they need to identify opportunities, navigate uncertainty, and compete on a global stage.
That vision has since evolved into a Pan-African decision intelligence platform trusted by more than 70 brands. What began as small, one-off research assignments has become a dynamic decision engine powered by over 100 million data points collected across 20 countries. Central to this evolution is the launch of Kasi AI.
Kasi AI is built specifically on African context and consumer truths. Unlike
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