ARRTE LTD
Field note — London · Cairo · Khartoum

Good work, undocumented, doesn't travel.

Arrte Ltd is a research and consultancy practice. We apply quantitative research and mathematical modelling to real problems, and we turn work that is already producing results on the ground into something funders, governments, and institutions can act on.

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Approach

Three things, done rigorously.

Research

We apply quantitative research and mathematical modelling across a broad spectrum of fields, including development, sustainability, public health, education, and organisational reform, particularly in settings where rigorous evidence is scarce and the stakes of getting it wrong are high.

Translate

Rigorous work that stays inside one institution changes nothing. We take research, reforms, and interventions that are already producing results on the ground and turn them into something the wider world can read, fund, replicate, and build on.

Connect

Arrte operates across a transdisciplinary network spanning mathematics, public health, industrial chemistry, environmental science, education, development, aviation systems, and nutrition research. We bring the right combination of expertise to problems that don't fit neatly into one field.

Services

Four things you can buy.

Arrte sells four things. Each exists because we have done it in the field, not because a market survey said we should. Every engagement ends with something you own: a document, a system, a set of tools that works after we leave.

01

Quantitative research and modelling

Statistical analysis, mathematical modelling, survey design and analysis, forecasting, and evaluation analytics, for programmes, policy, and operations. This is the discipline underneath everything else on this page: structures get corrected because we model them first, decisions hold because every scenario was costed, findings survive review because the statistics do.

We take the problem, build the mathematics around it, and hand back analysis your own team can interrogate: methods stated, assumptions visible, no black box. This is the work behind Case File 001: a flawed exchange-rate assumption identified and remodelled, funding a 39 percent real salary correction and a permanent 56 percent payroll reduction, without a pound of new money. Scoped studies run from two weeks to six months.

For anyone whose decisions, programmes, or research need numbers that hold: funders, governments, humanitarians, ministries, companies, academics, and researchers working in the field or from a desk.

02

Evidence and documentation for funders

Programmes end. Reports get filed. The knowledge inside them usually dies there. We turn field work into documents that survive scrutiny: case studies, evaluations, learning reviews, and reporting that reads like the work actually happened, because we go and check that it did.

An engagement runs four to twelve weeks. We interview, verify, write, and hand over material you own outright.

For funders and foundations closing out or renewing programmes, and for implementers who did good work and cannot prove it.

03

Organisational development and HR reform

Salary structures, job architecture, recruitment systems, capacity assessments, restructuring under pressure. We diagnose before we build, and we build things staff can run without us. This is the work behind Case Files 002, 003, and 004: over 180 job descriptions written for a federal ministry, a workforce flexibility framework adopted as standard practice, and capacity assessments across six enterprises. Engagements run two to six months: diagnosis first, then the build, then a documented handover.

For government institutions, NGOs, and companies facing reform they cannot staff internally.

04

Education systems for hard places

Accredited education, delivered where the textbooks say it cannot be: distributed students, multiple languages, low bandwidth, no proctoring infrastructure, markers who are not specialists. We design the whole system: curriculum, assessment that non-specialists can mark reliably, deep-skill assessment that specialists mark centrally, and student support that runs on the cheapest tools that exist.

This is not theory. It is running now, at scale. See Case File 006. Engagements range from a single assessment redesign to full programme architecture, and include training the people who will run it.

For universities, education providers, and funders delivering into displacement, conflict, or low-connectivity settings.

Who we work with

If any of this is your problem, we should talk.

INGOs and implementers who need analysis and documentation with field credibility, not consultancy gloss.

Funders and foundations who need to know what happened to their money, written in language their boards actually read.

Government institutions and ministries facing reform they cannot staff from inside.

Universities and education providers delivering into displacement, conflict, or low connectivity, or trying to.

About

Built on rigour.

Solara Abdelsamie Adam Ali, founder and director of Arrte Ltd
Solara Ali, Founder & Director

Arrte Ltd is led by Solara Abdelsamie Adam Ali, who brings together nearly three decades of university-level teaching in applied mathematics and stochastic analysis across Sudanese institutions, sixteen years inside a diplomatic mission in Khartoum, and consulting experience with USAID, Chemonics International, DT Global, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

She is a member of the American Mathematical Society and mentored Sudanese professionals in the diaspora through the OAKNA Foundation.

Arrte Ltd is registered in the UK. Work in Sudan is carried out in partnership with local implementing partners.

Network

This isn't a one-person practice.

Quantitative research rarely stays inside one discipline. Arrte's work draws on a transdisciplinary network of independent collaborators spanning multiple fields, each leading their own team or practice. None are employed by Arrte Ltd; each is engaged on a project basis as the work requires. The WHO case study below is one example of what this network produces in practice.

Samir Abdelsamie Adam Ali

Aviation systems

Co-founder of Arrte Ltd; leads ground operations teams as Deputy Manager of Ground Operations at Sun Air Aviation.

Dr. Maysoon Abdalla Mohamed Abdelrahman

Public health research

Leads public health research engagements in Cairo; led the research translation behind Arrte's WHO case study on integrated HIV, TB, Hepatitis & STI service delivery.

Dr. Omer Abdalla Ahmed Hamdi

Industrial chemistry

Leads a research group in natural products and industrial chemistry, based in Sudan; member of the Royal Society of Chemistry; author of 30+ papers (h-index 13).

Dr. Mohamed Hassan Ali Khalid

Orthopaedic surgery

Leads surgical teams as an orthopaedic surgeon at a teaching hospital in Ireland.

Dr. Afraa Abusalih

Environmental science

Leads environmental nanotechnology research, based in the United States.

Prof. Intesar Elrashid

Stochastic modelling

Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics at a Sudanese university; stochastic modelling specialist; co-author with Arrte's founder on research examining the impact of war on cattle populations in Sudan.

Dr. Sohair Shommo

Nutrition research

Leads nutrition research as Associate Professor of Nutrition at the University of Khartoum and Hail University, Saudi Arabia.

Collaborators, not staff: each works independently and is engaged by Arrte on a project basis.

Partnerships & affiliations

Worked alongside, not just for.

Over nine years, Arrte's founder has delivered research and consultancy work in partnership with international agencies, foundations, government institutions, and on-the-ground delivery partners, including:

A European diplomatic mission, Khartoum USAID Chemonics International DT Global Goethe-Institut Friedrich Ebert Foundation A federal government ministry, Sudan Health from Environment Society, Cairo

Some partners are named; others are described by category at their preference. Case files describe the work without attributing it to any partner.

Case files

Selected work.

CASE 006 — ACTIVE Active — 2024 to present

A mathematics department that fits in a phone

The war scattered a university. Students who once shared lecture halls now sit in examination centres across several countries, on unstable connections, in more than one language, many of them displaced, working, or both.

Scope note: the teaching is carried out by Arrte's founder in her personal capacity as an employed mathematics lecturer, entirely independent of Arrte Ltd. No teaching income flows through Arrte Ltd. The methodology was designed by the founder; Arrte's work is documenting, evaluating, and developing it into a transferable model. The academic employment is hers alone; the consulting product is the company's.

Six mathematics courses run through that environment: complex analysis, dynamical systems, graph theory, approximation theory, rings and modules, and discrete mathematics. Close to a thousand students across the year. The system that makes it work was designed, not improvised.

Assessment is split into two instruments: objective examinations that any staff member at any centre can mark against a key, and homework carrying thirty percent of every grade, marked centrally, where proof and construction live. Student support runs on the cheapest tool available, an open channel where students send photographs of their working and argue through proofs all term long. It doubles as continuous authentication. By exam day, the teacher can predict most marks before the papers come back.

Lectures are built on storytelling, real application, and a teacher willing to be wrong in front of a thousand people. That last part is what makes students willing to ask. The majority pass. The ones who outsourced their thinking do not; the exam finds them without any proctoring software at all.

~1,000 students  ·  16 centres  ·  multiple countries  ·  6 courses  ·  majority pass rate

The methodology is being written up as a transferable model for accredited education in conflict-affected and low-connectivity settings.

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CASE 005 Under review — WHO

Integrated Service Delivery for HIV, TB, Hepatitis & STIs

In response to a World Health Organization call for case studies on integrated service delivery, Arrte worked with Health from Environment Society in Cairo, who developed and piloted the model on the ground, to translate their implementation experience into a documented case study for international review. WHO has confirmed receipt and is reviewing the submission for inclusion in its guidance on integrated service delivery.

Implementation: Health from Environment Society, Cairo, led by Amina Agami. Research: Dr. Maysoon Abdalla Mohamed Abdelrahman. Translation & submission: Arrte Ltd.

CASE 004 Completed — 2021

Civil Society & Social Enterprise Capacity Assessment

As part of a programme supporting Sudanese civil society, Solara assessed the organisational capacity, governance, and growth readiness of six creative and cultural enterprises across Sudan. The assessment combined structured workshops, interviews, and survey data to identify each group's strengths and governance gaps, producing recommendations that fed directly into the wider programme's ongoing support to the sector.

Organisational capacity assessment, delivered through an international civil-society programme.

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CASE 003 Completed — 2020

Ministry HR & Organisational Reform

Engaged to support a federal government ministry in Sudan through an international development programme, Solara led a structured organisational diagnostic: interviews with every head of department, a ministry-wide staff survey, and a review of existing policy and structure. The consultancy produced new job descriptions for the ministry's 180+ staff, a revised organisational structure proposal, a communications strategy, and a roadmap for competency frameworks and performance management, work directly adopted into the ministry's ongoing reform process.

HR & organisational development consultancy, delivered through an international development programme.

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CASE 002 Completed

Workforce Flexibility for Staff Development

At a government mission abroad, four staff members wanted to pursue formal qualifications, but class schedules conflicted with shift patterns, and initial reviews found no way to accommodate them. Working with department managers, Solara mapped existing rostering flexibility and time-off mechanisms into an education-integration framework that required no policy exception and no new budget. All four staff completed their qualifications with zero disruption to operational coverage, and the framework was later adopted as standard practice.

Designed and led by Arrte's founder, in partnership with departmental management.

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CASE 001 Completed — 2014–2015

Currency Risk & Payroll Mathematical Modelling

During a period of severe currency devaluation affecting a government mission abroad, Solara identified a mathematical flaw in how salary budgets were calculated: a static exchange rate assumption that bore no relation to how funds actually moved between currencies. Correcting it exposed a substantial overstatement of true costs and freed up budget that had effectively never been missing.

The reallocation funded a ten-month retroactive pay correction for local staff, a 39% increase in real salary value, and a permanent 56% reduction in reported payroll costs, all without new funding.

Mathematical modelling & systems analysis led independently by Arrte's founder.

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Community & impact work

Some of this was never billed.

Alongside paid consultancy, Arrte's founder has spent years on self-funded, community-driven work in Sudan, often unpaid, that has reached thousands of families directly.

IMPACT 01 Paused 2023 — rebuilding

Teaching Them How to Fish: Skills Training & Revolving Microfinance

Teaching Them How to Fish channels charitable giving, zakat and sadaqa, into something other than direct aid: a revolving fund that trains people in financial management, resource management, and a trade, then finances them to start their own micro-businesses. Each funded entrepreneur returns 10% of profits into the fund, financing the next cohort. Training was delivered largely by volunteer practitioners who gave their time at no cost.

Over more than ten years of continuous, steadily growing operation, the programme reached more than 17,000 families, the majority women-led, and held capital of over 6 million Sudanese pounds, before the war that disrupted Sudan in April 2023 halted it entirely. Rebuilding is underway.

Designed, funded, and led by Arrte's founder for over a decade, delivered through a volunteer network of practitioners across Sudan.

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IMPACT 02 Completed

Mobile Clinics During the Khartoum Floods

When seasonal flooding hit Khartoum, Solara led a crowdfunding campaign to fund a rapid medical response for people who could not otherwise afford care. The campaign raised enough to run around 14 mobile clinics, staffed by physicians, dentists, biomedical scientists, and pharmacists, many of them young professionals looking for a meaningful way to help, with rented equipment and a stocked supply of free medicine.

Crowdfunding and delivery led by Arrte's founder, with volunteer medical professionals.

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IMPACT 03 Disrupted by political change — 2021

Advocating for Youth Land Access & Food Security

Working with contacts in government, Solara developed and advanced a proposal to allocate land to young people for food production, under structured conditions. The proposal moved through ministerial channels and was nearing approval when a change in government dissolved the transitional administration handling it. The underlying model remains active work Arrte intends to pursue through non-governmental channels.

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Contact

Start a conversation.

If any of this sounds like a problem you have, write to us. Describe the problem, not the procurement. Serious messages get a reply from the director, usually within two working days.