Dear Decision Maker,

Last week I wrote about COG (Critical Outcomes Group) and what we are building. The model. The geographies. The transition at Grey Dynamics.

This week is different.

This one is about us. The three of us. How John, Alastair, and I came to do this together. Why it took us 45 years combined to see it. And why ground truth still anchors everything we do.

So pour yourself a coffee. Let me walk you through it.

HOW IT STARTED

It started last year. John and I, talking.

Specifically about what we actually do. How we help companies and governments understand their risks and opportunities in places like Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

And here is the pattern we kept hitting.

We would bring the ground truth. We would bring the local perspective, the human terrain, the conversations that nobody else was having. And often, the client would walk away.

• Too risky
• Too complicated
• Easier solutions exist
• Faster solutions exist
• Cheaper solutions exist

For a lot of sectors, that is true. There are easier paths.

But not for critical minerals.

THE CHINA PROBLEM

In rare earths and strategic minerals, there is no easier path. There is no faster, cheaper alternative. Not if you actually want to compete.

China dominates this space. And it is not only a defence and national security problem. It is automotive. It is the green industry. It is the industrial base of every Western economy.

Now here is why China has won so far.

• No competition. They go to places nobody else will go.
• State sponsorship at a different scale. State and commercial interests move together. Capital flows fast. Financial consequences do not slow them down the way they slow us down.
• Different relationship to ESG. Western companies have built their own boundaries. Those boundaries are well-intentioned. But they may not be getting us where we need to go in a straight line.

And then there is the cultural piece. Which is the part most Western players never solve.

The Western mindset is contractual. I gave you my word. Here is the contract. This is what we do.

The mindset on the ground is relational. We had coffee. We had tea. We sat together. You met my family. I met yours.

There is so much more nuance to dealmaking in these contexts than the standard Western playbook allows for. John, Alastair and I had learned that the hard way. Separately. Over years.

Which brings me to how we got here.

45 YEARS, COMBINED

It took us roughly 45 years combined to get to the clarity we have now.

On my side. I was born in Somalia. Grew up in Europe. Went back in my twenties. The last fifteen, sixteen years I have spent on the ground. With communities. With governments. With international organisations. Understanding the human terrain. What I call ground truth.

On John's side. John Lechner is a journalist, independent researcher, and consultant, with a focus on central Africa, the Sahel, and the former Soviet Union. He holds a master's degree in foreign service from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree in Slavic Languages from Harvard. He speaks Russian, French, and Sango, the language of the Central African Republic. That last detail matters. There are not many Western researchers who bother to learn Sango. John did.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the BBC, among other major outlets. And his book, Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare, came out last year via Bloomsbury.

Here is why his work matters for what we are building.

John spent five years reporting on Wagner from inside the conflict zones. Ukraine. Northeast Syria. Mali, where he was forcibly disappeared for two days. He made his first trip to the Central African Republic in 2019. He has lived in Bangui. He has interviewed Wagner fighters at length, in their own language, in the places they actually operate.

And the conclusion he reached is one most analysts never get to.

A lot of Central Africans think about gold and diamonds differently from people in the West. They judge things on the basis of, is there security around the mines so we can go work in them? They wanted results. Wagner provided results, transactionally, for compensation. Security in exchange for mineral rights. Paid in gold. Paid in concessions. Paid in precious metals.

That is the model China and Russia have both been running.

It is transactional. Yes. But also much more nuanced than the word transactional suggests. There is more understanding required. And there is much more opportunity in it than most Western firms ever see.

ENTER ALASTAIR

Shortly after John and I started having these conversations, we met Alastair Smith. And it became clear pretty quickly that he was the third partner.

Here is what Alastair brings.

He is a Harvard-trained engineer who has been building renewable energy infrastructure across Africa since 2010. Co-founder of PowerGen Renewable Energy, which began in Kenya in 2011 and grew into a leading clean energy company on the continent.

• Eight years based in East Africa. Kenya, Tanzania, and across the region. Wind, then solar, then community microgrids.
• Seven years in Nigeria. He moved over in 2018 to start PowerGen's Nigeria entity. They became the first company to build a minigrid under the World Bank-funded Nigeria Electrification Project.
• Real impact on the ground. His work has connected tens of thousands of people to electricity, in some of the hardest places in the world to operate. Including a solar-powered water pumping system in Dadaab on the Kenya-Somalia border, the third-largest refugee camp in the world.

Some of the most difficult countries in the world to operate in, governance-wise and security-wise. He did it. By working within the structures and systems, formal and informal, that actually exist in those places.

What I love about Alastair's track record is this. He has spent fifteen years figuring out how to deliver infrastructure that communities actually want. Which, as I said in last week's newsletter, is exactly what most of the people we work with care about. They do not care about the mineral itself. They care about what the mineral can bring for their community.

Alastair has been building that bridge for fifteen years already. He brings that muscle to COG.

Between the three of us, the networks are real. The track records are real. The understanding is real.

The question was no longer whether we could do this.

The question was whether we would.

THE MOMENT IT CRYSTALLISED

The decision happened in the Middle East.

John and I were in Jordan. Sitting in a hotel one evening. And one of us said it.

Let's just go for this.

We called a friend of ours. Someone we have worked with for years. He was already invested in gold mines on the continent. He gave us his read. He shared what he was seeing. And by the end of that conversation, the case was sharp.

A few months later we were building. A few months after that we were closing deals.

That is where we are now.

WHY THIS WORKS

Let me put it this way. There are three reasons this works.

Reason one. We have spent decades on the ground. All three of us. In different ways. In different countries. With different networks. John in the Sahel and Central African Republic, speaking Sango and Russian, embedded in the actual conflict zones. Alastair in East Africa and Nigeria, building infrastructure project by project for fifteen years. Myself across the continent, with intelligence work and community work and the network that comes from being a Somali who went home. That is not something you can buy. It is not something you can outsource. It is not something you can replicate quickly. And it is the thing that almost every other platform in this space is missing.

Reason two. Communities listen to us. Because we have done the work. We have shown up. We have spent the years. We have had the coffees and the teas and the meals and the long conversations.

And here is the critical thing. They understand what we are offering is not extractive. It is an economic exchange. Built on local partnerships. Built on infrastructure. Built on what communities actually want. Which, in most cases, is not the mineral itself. It is what the mineral can bring for their community.

Reason three. Our team is built for this. I do not pretend that my own understanding of local communities is anthropologically deep. It is operationally deep. It is intelligence-deep. But the anthropological understanding requires its own specialists. So we have built a team that includes exactly those people. Community builders. Local-knowledge experts. People whose primary job is to understand the texture of the places we work in.

This is the difference between a platform that talks about communities and one that is built around them.

SYMBIOTIC, NOT PARASITIC

This is the principle I want to leave you with.

The COG platform is symbiotic. By design.

We integrate partners. We integrate local institutions. We integrate communities. The upside flows in multiple directions, not just one.

That is what Grey Dynamics has always been about too. Enabling others. Giving people the knowledge to act on opportunities they would otherwise miss.

The difference now is this. We can enable ourselves to do deals. And we can still enable others. Especially the partners we are bringing into the COG platform.

Both at once. Symbiotic, not parasitic.

That is the model.

WHY I WROTE THIS

Last week's newsletter was about what we are building.

This week's is about who we are.

I wrote this because the founders matter. The story matters. The 45 years of work that got us here matters. And because if you are going to consider working with us, you should know who you are working with.

A journalist who learned Sango so he could actually understand the Central African Republic. An engineer who has spent fifteen years bringing electricity to communities that everyone else gave up on. And me, a Somali kid who grew up in Europe and went back to do this work properly.

Ground truth still anchors us. It is why we exist. It is how we operate. It is what we deliver.

After this one, we go back to the order of the day.

REPLY KEYWORDS

• Reply FOUNDERS if you want to know more about John, Alastair, or my background and what we have worked on.
• Reply CRITICAL MINERALS if you want a conversation about the strategic landscape and where we are operating.
• Reply PARTNERSHIP if you think there is a way for us to work together.

I read every reply.

Talk soon,

Ahmed

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