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In the Western Balkans, Albania is witnessing remarkable economic growth propelled by foreign investment, infrastructure development, and a thriving tourism sector. Despite this positive trend, women-led businesses encounter uneven opportunities. As in many Western Balkans countries, women-led businesses in Albania tend to be smaller, concentrated in the services sector, and often constrained by factors such as limited networks and historical gender biases.

The USAID CATALYZE Engines of Growth (EoG) Activity and the USAID Diaspora Invest Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina are creating new investment opportunities in the country. While domestic family businesses have developed over generations, they need to prepare to find investors and for future investments. This was the driving force behind the organization of the “Family Business: Next Generation” workshop, which brought together representatives from 28 micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

USAID CATALYZE Partners with the Private Sector to Propel the Growth of Women-owned Businesses through Innovative FinancingA CASE STUDYBackground

In the Western Balkans, women entrepreneurs face notable challenges in accessing finance, stemming from issues such as high collateral requirements, societal norms, and financial literacy gaps. USAID CATALYZE Engines of Growth (EoG) in the Western Balkans addresses these challenges by establishing a network of Business Advisory Service Providers (BASPs) and promoting alternative financing sources tailored to SME needs.Learning from Experience:

In the second blog in the series, the authors focus on the importance of using a retail distribution market systems lens to gain insights into the business realities of selling construction products and services to low-income customer segments. For example, low-income customers buy in smaller lots and often have important considerations related to decision-making, coping strategies, and trust that require specific business strategies and tactics. The blog examines a few examples from TCIS’s work in relation to how they applied systemic thinking related to retail distribution to improve housing outcomes for incremental builders.

This post was written by Habitat for Humanity's Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and was Originally Published on the Vikāra Institute's website.

Belgrade, Serbia — September 15, 2023 — The USAID CATALYZE Western Balkans Engines of Growth (EoG) Activity successfully concluded its regional learning event, “Synergy in Learning: Catalyzing SMEs Financing in the Western Balkans,” held in Belgrade, Serbia on September 14th and 15th, 2023.

USAID CATALYZE helps women SMEs access new markets and grow

With more than half of Hondurans younger than 25 and the majority of the population living below the poverty line, young people need access to employment opportunities. Yet, too many Honduran young women and men face dismal economic prospects with 27 percent of youth not in education, employment or training. Compounded by the impacts of climate change and food insecurity, those who cannot find jobs are at risk of falling further into poverty or migrating elsewhere in search of opportunities.

The USAID/World Council of Credit Unions’ (WOCCU) Economic Inclusion Project in March introduced to more than 100 representatives of Peru’s financial sector a formal guide that will help them identify the types of assistance refugee and migrant populations need to access formal financial services, and the best practices to help facilitate their financial inclusion.

USAID CATALYZE Partners with Private Equity Fund to Ready SMEs for Private Investors Increasingly, global private investors are eyeing the Western Balkans as the potential for diversifying their portfolios. While private equity financing can raise working capital for a company through restructuring ownership and/or management, few small- and medium-sized business owners in the region are aware of, understand, or desire such a private equity model. In fact, many SME owners resist giving up power and ownership to outsiders.

USAID’s Amazon Vision is focused on fostering an environmentally friendly economy so that forest-dependent communities can develop their local economies in a sustainable way. Fishing is an important livelihood for Indigenous and other communities living along the Juruá River in Brazil. Both women and men in these riverine fishing communities play essential roles in the fishing industry: while men fish for pirarucu—the world’s largest-scaled freshwater fish—women process, clean, and sanitize the fish. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International’s Senior Regional Director of Latin America. She reflects on the importance of private sector engagement after a recent trip to El Salvador. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International's Senior Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

This blog is written by Anila Behramaj.

This blog was originally published on the USAID Medium. By Dragana Todosijevic, USAID CATALYZE Engines of Growth (EoG)

In early 2022, the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) started to emerge from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, boasting rising industrial production, exports to the European Union (EU), increases in wages, and credit growth. The region is ripe for investment, but Russia’s war against Ukraine threatens this recovery, through higher energy and food costs, disruption in supply chains, and interruptions in trade.

USAID CATALYZE Peru increases small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and producer associations’ access to finance through an innovative Pay for Results (P4R) program, which helps financial institutions (FI) minimize their risk in lending while growing their portfolios in underserved regions in the Amazon. CATALYZE Peru has signed P4R agreements with 10 FIs, which have committed to mobilize USD24.1 million to the Amazonia region.

Biljana Stanisavljva started her small business in Serbia in 2011, growing wheat and corn as a smallholder farmer. She wants to grow her business, but like many agricultural entrepreneurs, she finds it very challenging to obtain funds for her expansion plans. And as a woman, she faces additional challenges. Even after a decade as a registered business owner, she still has to rely on her husband for most business decisions. 

When Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas in 2019, USAID led and coordinated the U.S. Government’s disaster response efforts, deploying an elite disaster team and providing nearly $34 million in humanitarian assistance.

Third in a series of five blogs on the factors that contribute to sustaining and scaling private sector partnerships from the Enduring Results Study 3.0

Over 67 million youth are unemployed globally and the majority live in rural areas with limited economic opportunities. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmingly impacted youth whose employment fell by more than twice that of adults in 2020.

(Second in a series of five blogs about the drivers of sustainability in USAID partnerships with the private sector based on the Enduring Results Study 3.0)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recently released the Amazon Vision 2020 Report describing its achievements in biodiversity and sustainable landscape initiatives across Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname. As part of this progress update, the report focuses on the Agency’s work to promote a more sustainable and innovative development model that supports Amazonian entrepreneurs with a vision for a sustainable local economy.

Worldwide, the private sector is playing an unprecedented role in shaping opportunities that improve the lives in the countries and communities that USAID supports. For six decades, USAID has partnered with the private sector to solve the world’s most complex development challenges and to help countries accelerate development progress.