Blog

The final blog in this series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations demonstrates why going beyond financial support is essential to provide partners with the coaching, networking, and advocacy needed to succeed in particularly complex, fragile and conflict-affected environments. It draws on the experience of the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

This blog, the third in a series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity's experience vetting private-sector actors as potential development partners in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where a paucity of enterprise data, low standards for company operations, and an absence of familiar business norms make it difficult to apply a typical approach to partner prospecting.

This blog, the second in a series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on managing private-sector actors who are problematically invested in maintaining a fragile, humanitarian-dependent socioeconomic system dominated by conflict. It describes the strategy of the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity for selecting partners and co-creating activities with communities in a conflict-sensitive way in the eastern DRC and explores the team's discomfort with some aspects of the 'bad actor' paradigm.

This blog, the first in a series inspired by the four take-away lessons from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on adding social inclusion and conflict sensitivity as a third dimension to shared value in the partnerships of the USAID Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

In March 2020, the Government of Uganda introduced a series of preventative measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the country. These measures, including the closure of businesses and restriction of movement, were anticipated to have an impact on the economy and on agricultural production. USAID/Uganda was interested in understanding the impact of COVID-19 and these government measures on the agricultural market system, to anticipate how resilient the system would be and to identify opportunities to adapt existing programming or introduce new emergency measures.

This is one of two posts reflecting on private-sector engagement in a complex, thin market system (read the companion post). It relates to a previous four-part series you can read on Marketlinks.

This is one of two posts reflecting on private-sector engagement in a complex, thin market system (read the companion post. It relates to a previous four-part series on Marketlinks.

Learn how USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures grantees are adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck, the data science company Fraym understood its unique product was critical in mounting the most effective global COVID-19 response at scale.

USAID's Somalia Growth, Enterprise, Employment and Livelihoods project is responding to COVID-19 by employing a strategy across its value chains to mitigate the impact of distruped supply chains and damage to the private sector.

Since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, CARE has prioritized supporting groups to lead their own COVID-19 responses. The groups are rising to the occasion.

This post shares thoughts from Dr. Michael Kremer on an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Dr. Kremer directs USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures program and is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

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.

CIAT supports the development of seed systems uniting actors along the value chain to create sustainable seed systems and spur links with formal seed producers.

USAID/Mozambique engaged in programming, assessing, and leading critical climate change technical assistance activities that support low-emission development strategies (LEDS), building climate change resilience, and strengthening local capacity.

KATA Solar is one of a dozen Ghanaian companies offering rooftop solar. Sales of solar products in West Africa’s off-grid energy access market jumped by nearly one-third in the first half of 2017.

This post explores how USAID is mobilizing institutional investors to develop Africa's infrastructure through an initiative called MiDA, which connects American investors to the local partners.

This is the second post in a two-part blog series. This post explores the methodology to quantitatively measure social connectedness.

Najib Seguya of the Feed the Future Uganda Youth Leadership in Agriculture (YLA) activity’s Strategic Activities Fund team discusses key considerations to keep in mind when designing a pay-for-results (PfR) program, also known as performance-based financing.

Village Enterprise works to end extreme poverty in rural Africa by providing groups of three entrepreneurs with seed capital, training, ongoing mentoring, and support for the formation of Business Savings Groups. This post highlights a $5.32m payment-for-results project in the form of a Development Impact Bond.

As Marketlinks examines Pay-for-Results this August, check out this blog from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) highlighting compact designed to reduce poverty through economic growth in Cabo-Verde.

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.

Data protection is a primary focus of the humanitarian sector. In late 2016, USAID supported a digital cash transfer preparedness grant meant to help NGOs be equally well-prepared to offer (digital) cash as to offer other modalities of assistance (e.g. in-kind items).

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 is the third blog in the Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation building private sector resilience blog series.