TIPS’s central activities are economic research and analysis, dialogue facilitation on relevant economic issues, capacity building and project management. It undertakes research or projects either on a commissioned basis (funded by an external partner) or as in-house thought leadership (funded internally). A portion of TIPS’s core funding is provided by the Department of Trade and Industry.

TIPS research and analysis draws on its own as well as a network expertise in the fields of industrial development, trade, inequality, green economy, electricity and mining as well as a number of industry subsectors.

As part of its dialogue work TIPS organises regular Development Dialogue Seminars and the TIPS Annual Forum. Having built up experience of running over 15 economic conferences over the past 20 years, TIPS can also be contracted to organise economic conferences for other organisations.

As part of its capacity building work, TIPS runs over 10 training workshops for individuals and groups on economic related issues. These workshops draw on a number of experts in their field. TIPS co-facilitates the annual African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) programme, and co-hosts a number of seminars with APORDE.

TIPS’s main strengths are:

• Its technical capacity especially for economic analysis and research;
• Its understanding of the policy environment in government and its ability to facilitate dialogue on key economic issues at a high level within and outside of government;
• Its ability to provide research, analysis, dialogue and capacity building services under one roof in a continuous and seamless process.

This allows the organisation to assist partners and beneficiaries at all stages of a policy life cycle and to participate in forward-looking thinking and future agenda setting.

TIPS’s work is backed by support services that allow for flexible, high-quality administration of complex programme management, large rolling budgets and extensive monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements. TIPS’s support processes have specific experience in dealing with governmental and donor agency contracting.