Blog

FES Vice President Roberta Lauretti-Bernhard participated in the the Specialty Coffee Association EXPO (SCA) in Chicago April 10 -14. FES & Joe Coffee Company  co-hosted a lecture on "Gender Equity in 2024: Women in the Global Coffee Value Chain". The event was developed by Roberta, Amaris Gutierrez-Ray from Joe Coffee and Karen Cebreros, founder of Elan Organic Coffee and co-founder of the Int’l Women in Coffee Alliance (IWCA).

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

(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)

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. 

Like many women, Wamahoro, a native of Rwanda, once worked two jobs, one of which was in the informal sector. “I used to sell my baskets at the local market to supplement my farming income,” she says. At the local market, however, Wamahoro’s handmade baskets sold for only 82 cents a basket — not much in the way of supplemental income.

As investors search out bankable opportunities within green growth sectors, they would do well to look to Sub-Saharan Africa, where renewable natural capital assets account for a higher share of total wealth than in any other region.

Experts from USAID and RTI discuss how agricultural market systems – both domestically and globally – can be a driver of resilience, buffering us from the ripple effects of shocks and stresses such as the ongoing pandemic.

Youth — who make up a large portion of the potential workforce in developing countries — are often left out of markets systems, representing a significant lost opportunity to deliver social and economic benefits. 

Examining gender-specific COVID-19 impacts and integrating women’s empowerment interventions in agriculture remains essential to COVID-19 survival and recovery.

In a four-part blog series, the EEFS project explores a central question: what enables cross-border trade for safe foods?

Sylvia Natukunda is feeling the effects of COVID-19. As the founder of Farm Reap, a Kampala, Uganda-based company that produces five flavors of yogurt, she is putting together a game plan on how to keep her business profitable.

Given the primacy of seed for agricultural sector resilience and growth, development actors are eager to address seed needs in the wake of conflict. This post explores how to tailor those investments for fragile contexts in a way consistent with long-term seed market development.

The vast majority of food grown in Africa is by smallholder farmers. Implementing these four recommendations will speed up the process of putting improved seed in the hands of Africa’s food growers permanently.

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.

Power Africa teamed up with USAID INVEST to increase access to solar home systems and mini-grids across Kenya. Through Azuri Technology's pay-as-you-go-model, they are projected to provide 390,000 new connections and 6,000 upgraded connections across the country.

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 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.

In Nigeria, a Pay-for-Results prize competition incents use of Aflasafe to combat aflatoxin contamination and drive demand for higher-quality maize.

This is the second blog the Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation series on building private sector resilience. Stay tuned for the next blog in the private series, as we look at an example of how a more resilient company can provide critical technologies and value-added services after a natural disaster.

Strengthening grain contracts in Mali has the potential to open up farmers' access to products and services they need to operate and grow their businesses, achieving key agriculture development results in the process.

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.

This post originally appeared on Agrilinks and was authored by Kusi Hornberger.

Some have found Africa’s participation in world trade to be low. However, a relatively well-developed literature argues that Africa’s trade has been in line with predicted trends and that the continent’s participation in international trade reflects its level of economic activity.

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.

Explore findings from two studies that look at social capital within maize and dairy cooperatives in Rwanda.