Blog

Browse recent blogs of interest to the Marketlinks community. Use the search box or the filters on the left-hand side to refine the listing of blogs by keyword, topic, and/or region/country.

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Women to Lean On: Financing For Women, By Women

February 10, 2022
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. 

The Market Corner: Towards Greater Equity and Inclusion in Supply Chains

February 7, 2022

Author(s):

Marketlinks Team
This post was written by Holly Lard Krueger. This month on the Market Corner, I find common ground with two human rights advocates from completely different international development fields by exploring issues of equity and inclusion in supply chains and the application of systems thinking.

WomenConnect Challenge Blog Series: Strategy 3 — Cultivating Women’s Confidence

February 3, 2022

Author(s):

Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub
This blog is part of the WomenConnect Challenge Blog Series: Introducing Strategies for Closing the Gender Digital Divide. USAID’s WomenConnect Challenge (WCC) is a global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the ways women access and use technology.

This February, Marketlinks explores some key considerations for promoting local and regional manufacturing of health products

February 1, 2022
Stockouts and shortages of quality-assured medical products — including those required to prevent maternal and child deaths, and combat and control infectious disease threats — are still common in many countries despite being critical for saving lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted global health supply chain vulnerabilities, including an overreliance on a small number of suppliers for key active pharmaceutical ingredients, as well as on a large concentration of pharmaceutical manufacturing in Asia.

WomenConnect Challenge Blog Series: Strategy 1 — Changing Social Norms and Cultural Perceptions

January 20, 2022

Author(s):

Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub
This blog is part of the WomenConnect Challenge Blog Series: Introducing Strategies for Closing the Gender Digital Divide. USAID’s WomenConnect Challenge (WCC) is a global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the ways women access and use technology. In the first round of the Challenge, WCC awarded nine grants to organizations working to identify and change the social and economic circumstances that keep women offline and under-empowered.

The Market Corner: Applying a Systems Approach to e-Business

January 13, 2022
This month, the Market Corner takes a look at one e-business leader's experience applying a systems approach to grow her businesses. What can more than a decade of experience implementing market systems development (MSD) programs in Nigeria and Bangladesh teach a rising e-business entrepreneur?   Talking the talk and walking the walk.

WomenConnect Challenge Blog Series: Introducing Strategies for Closing the Gender Digital Divide

January 11, 2022

Author(s):

Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub
“All technology has potential when modeled in the vacuum of our whiteboards and proposals,” remarks Revi Sterling, Director of the USAID WomenConnect Challenge (WCC). Shrewdly cutting to the chase, Sterling adds: “[But] rural smallholder farmer women do not live in vacuums.” In other words: for digital technologies to be part of any development solution, practitioners must first address the myriad of real-life barriers and inequities surrounding technology use.

This January, Marketlinks Explores the Role of eCommerce in Advancing Development Outcomes

January 3, 2022

Author(s):

Marketlinks Team
This post was authored by Kati Suominen, Founder and CEO, Nextrade Group and Technical Director, eTrade Alliance. This January, the Alliance for eTrade Development (“eTrade Alliance”) will be taking over Marketlinks, sharing experiences from its two years of implementation and making the case for why enabling ecommerce should be at the forefront of the development agenda.

The Market Corner: Advice for Aspiring Senior Market Systems Development Leaders

December 21, 2021

Author(s):

Marketlinks Team
Earlier this month, I spoke with market systems development (MSD) expert Mike Klassen and two MSD leaders, Nina FitzSimons CEO of PRISMA, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade-funded program in Indonesia, and Bidowra Khan, Team Lead for Social Inclusion and Support Market Systems for the USAID Feed the Future Rice and Diversified Crops Activity in B

Private Sector Engagement (PSE) and Market Systems Development (MSD): Improving Each Other

December 21, 2021

Author(s):

Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships
Reflections from Katie Garcia, Deputy Director of USAID’s Private Sector Engagement Hub, and Kristin O’Planick, Market Systems Team Lead in USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security. There is a growing amount of convergence between PSE and MSD. For practitioners of either approach, there is value in learning more about the tools and techniques of the other to see how they can be useful in advancing the shared goal of transformational change.