Blog

The blog provides an excellent case of how smallholders can be integrated into a high-value supply chain when the contexts are effectively considered. The example shows how context specific efforts the generate value will take off, and can emerge as an attractor that encourages ongoing change with knock-on effects. It is also important to recognize that there are concerns related to only working with a single firm.

By Desmond Dodd, INVEST Communications When Tanzania’s government recently began reducing funding, medical supplies, and staff available to faith-based hospitals, Peter Maduki quickly understood the stakes involved for his members. “Some of our hospitals will be at a high risk of closing,” said Maduki, the Executive Director of the Christian Social Services Commission (CSSC), a national ecumenical organization that facilitates health services through member churches.

FROM SILICON VALLEY STARTUP TO LANDMARK ACQUISITION Access to technology is an essential component to development, especially in Africa. Africans use cheap mobile phones to pay their bills, conduct small business, and make calls anywhere and everywhere. However, even a small mobile phone is not useful if power is not available to charge it. Eighty percent of African households lack electric power, which limits opportunities to access information and mobile money, as well as business and educational opportunities. 

Field research from from around the world is finding that resilience to climate-related shocks can encourage rural families to invest more for higher productivity, creating new opportunities for greater prosperity.

Nine projects are funded by NWO-WOTRO to strengthen the Netherlands-CGIAR research partnership on generating insights that contribute to improving seed systems in focus regions within Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa.

In August, Marketlinks is focusing on the Pay-for-Results model in global development. This post from the World Bank blog highlights an upcoming project to incentivize dairy suppliers in Tanzania to deliver input bundles for smallholder dairy farmers.

This post offers recommendations on managing the shifts in culture, management and partnering needed when a project shifts from providing direct services to a facilitative market systems approach.

This blog introduces the Feed the Future Tanzania Land Tenure Assistance (LTA) project, which works with local banks to encourage new loan opportunities to improve farms and small businesses.

Market systems that inhibit productivity growth and depress livelihoods are familiar enough across the developing world. Barriers to improvement that turn out to be fundamentally political are two-a-penny.

Learn about innovations in agricultural index insurance to help build a future of prosperity and resilience for small-scale farmers and pastoralists worldwide.

The Feed the Future NAFAKA II: Cereals Market System Development project, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA, developed a strategy to boost agricultural growth in Tanzania’s staple crops by helping individuals form producer organizations.

USAID is helping the Government of Tanzania to improve communities’ understanding of land rights, support village land use planning, and clarify, document and certify property rights.

Digital services — with their geographic reach, ease of use, and transparency — are driving financial inclusion and alleviating poverty. But are rural women being left behind?

Increasingly, USAID is focusing on digital finance as the critical pathway toward scaling meaningful financial inclusion. But what does that mean?

Why are there such stark discrepancies between official statistics and specialized market research on wage labor? FAO's Bernd Mueller explains.

Two main objectives of the NAFAKA program are to improve the competitiveness and productivity of maize and rice value chains and to expand the benefits from the growth of the maize and rice subsectors, especially to women and youth.

In this video, Rosner and Eckert discuss how the project has achieved quick wins while still ensuring sustainability through solid planning, relationship strengthening, and behavior change strategies.

Earthwise Ferries, one of 14 winners of the USAID- and Western Union-funded African Diaspora Marketplace business plan competition, is launching a fleet of "green" ferries on Lake Victoria to facilitate trade and travel.

Tweet Roundup from Breakast Seminar #58

Billy Jack (Georgetown) and Claire Alexandre (Gates Foundation) discuss M-PESA, the successful mobile banking scheme.