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In early 2020, the Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA, began an assessment to understand how the Activity could increase financial access for agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprises (agri-SMEs) in Bangladesh during COVID-19. The assessment originally focused on opportunities for the Activity to increase financial access through agent banks during the pandemic.

The current COVID-19 pandemic calls for innovative solutions and increased collaboration with new partners, including the private sector, to expand reach and access to all vaccines.

By Lauren Yang, USAID INVEST Communications People who join tech company Fulfillment Bridge rarely leave. Since day one, CEO and founder Kais Khadhraoui has established a flexible company culture, only requiring employees to work from Fulfillment Bridge’s office three days a week. Mondays and Fridays are free days, allowing team members to work from home, take short trips to see parents, or even do their work lying on a beach.

This post was originally posted on the SCOPEinsight website.

This post is authored by Susan Rae Ross, Sr. Private Sector Engagement Advisor, Office of Maternal/Child Health and Nutrition, USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Gaurav Sharma, Sr. Maternal, Newborn, Child Health Technical Advisor and Dr. Christopher Morgan, Sr Immunization Technical Advisor for the MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery Project.

By Erin Magee, Regional Advisor, Latin America & the Caribbean, USAID/Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance For Diana Arismendy Schroeder, establishing a community-centered approach is critical when working in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

The private sector is a powerful force in driving economic growth, creating jobs, and boosting opportunities that improve the lives of people and communities worldwide. USAID has partnered with companies and investors to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges since its founding in 1960. 

Across engagement efforts in the field, we’ve seen firsthand how some private sector actors can mitigate drivers of instability and conflict by creating jobs, providing essential goods, increasing financial inclusion, developing infrastructure, advocating for peace and economic stability, and promoting other forms of inclusive economic development.

This post is the second installment in Marketlinks' new blog series, The Market Corner, which explores market systems development (MSD) implementation in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) during the month of October.

A new blog series explores the opportunities and challenges market systems development practitioners face working side-by-side with humanitarian actors in fragile and conflict-affected situations.

This post was written by Dan Hudner, Market System Resilience Measurement Lead at Mercy Corps.

Pension funds and other institutional investors hold more than $100 trillion in assets, and their stakeholders are increasingly interested in utilizing those funds to make socially responsible investments. At the same time, countries in Africa are growing fast — but risk falling behind if they can’t finance the necessary infrastructure to support their growth. On the surface, it would seem like a perfect union of returns and social responsibility. Yet only a fraction of institutional investors hold assets in developing countries. What is holding them back?

This post was originally published on the SCOPEinsight website.

In collaboration with USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, Marketlinks is exploring private sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected settings during October.

How can young people prepare for a future that few of us can define today?

Africa is beaming with the radiance of its youth; however, their future doesn’t seem so bright.

Given that agriculture is the largest employer globally with over a billion workers, green jobs provide an avenue for agri-food systems employment that helps address food security and climate change.

Author: Digital Frontiers Staff, DAI

This post is authored by Joseph Spanjers and Camille Parker from the Economics Team in the Center for Economics and Market Development and is part of a series of blogs focused on Youth Employment throughout September on

Have you ever thought about your career as a lifelong project? That’s how over 2,000 young people in western Burkina Faso define their professional journey.

In the Feed the Future Senegal Youth in Agriculture program, 4-H clubs help youth build life skills, relationships and hands-on learning that will prepare them for future employment opportunities.

Youth promoters worked with Bell Industries to help the company sell PICS bags, an innovative grain storage solution that prevents post-harvest loss, to smallholder farmers in Kenya.

As part of its work in Uganda, the USAID/Uganda Feed the Future Market System Monitoring (MSM) Activity applied a systems approach to understanding the Karamoja region, the focus of humanitarian and resilience programming in Uganda.

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.

By Clare Clingain and Emily Sloane, International Rescue Committee (IRC) If you want to understand something, you probably need to measure it – and measure it well. Chances are, someone has already tried to measure what you want to examine, but if that’s not the case, it’s important to design a tool that’s fit for the intended purpose and to test it out in multiple contexts.