Established 1990 · Harare 1991–1999 · Re-established 2025
Design that starts with what people already have.
Design Co-Operation (DCO) is a design initiative for social impact, founded in Harare in 1990 and re-established in 2025 by Pierre-Yves Panis. It works with communities, local enterprises, NGOs and the institutions that support them, across Southern Africa.
The situation
Development funding in the region is changing. Across Southern Africa, daily life depends on the informal sector: the workshops, traders and builders who make, repair and sell with the tools and materials at hand. As funding shifts, the programmes that depended on outside capital are the first to stop. What lasts is capability that stays with the people who use it: better products, better methods, access to markets. Design can build that.
Where DCO comes from
From 1991 to 1999, DCO worked with small-scale informal entrepreneurs in Mbare Siya-So, Harare’s largest informal production site. Products were designed around the entrepreneurs’ own materials, tools and skills, so they stood out from the identical copies on sale around them, and DCO helped secure orders and distributors.
2×
income for members of the Mbare Design Group, without any capital injection
1,500+
pieces of the Maphosa range sold between 1995 and 2000, at twice the price of the copies they replaced
What DCO does
Design support for enterprises
Products and services that small enterprises can make, sell and sustain.
Development support and research
Project design with organisations and donors, grounded in what communities need.
Education and training
Practical design methods for schools, universities and training centres.
Areas of work: Local enterprise · Financial inclusion · Housing · Mobility · Education · Energy and water · Essential services
Who DCO works with
Organisations on the ground
Communities, local enterprises, NGOs
You know the problem and the place. DCO brings design methods and market thinking, and leaves both with you.
Those who fund and support them
Foundations, companies, institutions
You want results that outlast the funding cycle. DCO plans for local ownership from the first day.
Work
All work →
Pierre-Yves Panis
Co-founded DCO in Harare in 1990. Then spent twenty-five years leading design at Moen, Legrand, Orange and Signify (Philips Lighting). Returned to DCO in 2025 to apply both experiences to the same work.