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Our history

We engaged our first 'lady clerk' pioneering the employment of women in offices For 25 years we managed the UK government's humanitarian deployent logistics and procurement capacity, responding to crises around the world. We became a social enterprise as a private limited company owned by a non-profit-making foundation The british governemtn appointed the first 'Crown Agents', George Baillie and Edward Banard. We moved to our new central London HQ in Blackfriars, providing the capacity and agility for us to continue to meet the needs of our clients in a fast changing world We set up our first international offices in Washington DC. We have a network of 21 offices around the world and actively work on projects in 64 countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we provided countries with vital PPE and procured and shipped the COVID-19 vaccine on behalf of governments across the world

185 years of accelerating self-sufficiency and prosperity

Since 1833, we’ve been empowering leaders to accelerate self-sufficiency and prosperity for their communities, businesses, institutions and countries.

In the 19th century, that meant connecting people and trade by building roads and railways. In the 20th century, it meant building the capacity of national governments to meet their citizens’ needs, managing funds to support service delivery in difficult contexts and delivering world-class humanitarian aid. In the 21st century, we’re continuing that work and investigating the potential of frontier technologies to accelerate the pace of change for our partners.