You do not have a writing problem. You have a coherence problem.

Two or three reviewers open your file. Limited time, a scoring grid, thirty other applications to get through. What they understand in the first two minutes decides the outcome. Not the real quality of your science.

Most training teaches you to write better. There are already a thousand courses for that. I work on the part nobody teaches: how reviewers decide, how to align your work with each funder's mission, and how to position yourself so that choosing you feels obvious.

I learned this the slow way. Two years of rejection after my PhD, from Cameroon, with no Western degree and no famous institution behind me. Then more than €500,000 in competitive funding, once I understood what was actually being judged. What I learned at my own expense became a method, and a method can be handed over.

Book me if you are carrying one of these:

You have a call open and you are not sure it is yours. We run it through People, Project, Place, Funder before you commit six weeks to it. Sometimes the most valuable hour we spend is the one that stops you applying.

You keep losing with strong work and no explanation. Bring the file and the rejection. I will read it the way the panel read it, and tell you where it lost.

You cannot say in three sentences what you are building. Reviewers cannot either, and that is what is costing you. We fix the direction before we touch any proposal.

Your CV lists everything and argues nothing. We connect what you have done, what you can do now, and where you are going into one line a tired reviewer can follow.

You are treating your African context as something to explain away. It is expertise, evidence, and access. We make it read that way.

You want a shortlist instead of an inbox. Ten realistic opportunities, three priorities, and a reason for each.

Come with something concrete. A call you are considering, a draft, a rejected proposal, a CV. The hour is worth much more with material in front of us than with a general conversation about funding.

Where I sit is unusual, and it is the reason this works. The panels judging you were largely trained in the North and score by codes they were never asked to explain out loud. You were never given those codes, and were told instead to work harder. I have spent years on both sides of that gap. That is the whole of my specialty.

I promise no funding. Nobody honest can. Panels change, budgets close, excellent work loses. What I give you is the codes nobody taught you, and a method you can use on the next call without me.