Avilian Research Labs investigates the difficult realities of Zimbabwe and the Global South — and explores the ideas, enterprises and institutions capable of changing them.
Investigate · Reason · Build
You don't have to enter politics to change your country.
You can build the solutions your country needs.
We believe many of the Global South's deepest challenges should not be approached solely as political problems, but as opportunities for human ingenuity, enterprise, and institution-building.
Why we publish
Knowledge should not merely explain the world.It should help people build a better one.
Our focus is Zimbabwe and the wider Global South — where complex challenges demand research, rigorous thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation and practical solutions.
We investigate ideas, challenge assumptions, and draw clear conclusions where the evidence warrants them. More importantly, we seek to turn knowledge into ideas, enterprises and institutions capable of creating real value for people and communities.
Source claims. Challenge assumptions. Label estimates honestly.
Draw clear conclusions only where the evidence warrants them.
Turn insight toward enterprise and institution-building — not only recommendations on a page.
Research library
An archive in progress — sport, economics, AI safety and public policy.
How the FIFA Forward Enterprise collapsed — and why the confederation that killed it wasn't the one that needed the money.
FIFA sends millions to federations. Almost none of it becomes a player's salary. Here's the gap, in real numbers.
The accountability record that hands football's wealthiest confederations their easiest argument.
What Britain's refusal to discuss reparations reveals about who gets to decide when a conversation happens at all.
Not money first. A specific kind of practice, repeated thousands of times.
What the IMF's 80-year voting fight teaches us about UEFA's objection to FIFA's money.
A defense of Gianni Infantino, built entirely on the verified funding record.
The strongest argument FIFA Forward Enterprise's defenders could make — presented on its own terms.
At what point does football stop being a dream and become an economically rational career?
Rejecting a false choice that costs young Zimbabweans their futures either way.
How one verified salary number becomes an entire region's labour market.
A narrow, hardened engineering argument about why persuasion is itself an authority risk.
What Jacob Coxon's resignation really revealed — and why almost no one is making the distinction that matters.
Ecosystem