Blog

This blog post was written by Emily Langhorne of USAID INVEST

This month, Marketlinks is exploring health markets. Throughout November, we will take a deep look into the topic and its relation to other relevant subject areas, like health financing, inclusive health access, and digital technology in health markets

On the outskirts of Johannesburg, in the eastern part of Soweto Township, lies South Africa’s most famous street. Vilakazi Street, once home to former South African President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is the only street in the world to have housed two Nobel Prize winners.

Banks in Bangladesh are exploring agent banking and digital services as ways of coping with COVID-19 restrictions, expanding financial inclusion to those in need, and preventing the gap in microfinancing from widening further.

Local textile manufacturers in North and West Africa are pivoting to meet demand for personal protective equipment.

In January 2020, the Feed the Future Ghana Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement II (ADVANCE II) Project conducted a gender assessment in these culturally distinct regions to explore how women performed as members of village savings and loan associations (VSLAs).

In Somalia, USAID is helping blunt the economic impact of COVID-19 by supporting financial institutions and contributing to Somalis’ ability to cope with, and build resilience to, the COVID-19 crisis.

Despite the fact that Guatemala is an upper-middle-income country, almost 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. Agriculture is one of Guatemala’s main economic drivers; it has employed at least one in three Guatemalans since 2000; and in 2018, the agriculture value added was ten percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Individuals now have the opportunity to join the SEEP Network.

The shared-value approach makes a strong case for private-sector engagement in the international development arena.

How can programs encourage and enable local commercial banks to lend to companies supplying solar home systems for off-grid customers? This post is part two in a three-part series, and addresses solar photovoltaic systems for commercial and industrial users and providers.

In many developing countries, the companies that build, supply, and sell clean energy solutions have difficulty obtaining bank loans or other financing to expand their businesses or reach new markets. This blog shares how Power Africa is working with the Climate Economic Analysis for Development, Investment and Resilience (CEADIR) Activity to support off-grid energy companies in Rwanda.

This post shares a blog from the USAID Global Development Lab that highlights key considerations and resources for applying a gender lens to digital development and COVID-19 responses.

Through the 2X Women’s Initiative, DFC invests in businesses and funds owned by women, led by women, or providing a product or service that intentionally empowers women, such as clean water and quality healthcare.

While women are making progress in attracting venture capital and angel funding, they still are vastly underrepresented in the funding league tables.

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.

How do agricultural households make decisions about the uptake of new practices or inputs alongside savings, credit, and insurance products? MEDA INNOVATE shares learnings on the potential of non-traditional finance to enable agricultural innovation adoption among smallholder farmers.

CGAP CEO Greta Bull and Timothy Ogden highlight how the millions who rely on inclusive finance to borrow, save and spend money are counting on the microfinance sector.

This blog post explores how one USAID initiative got banks on board to provide $1 billion in services in rural Colombia and how this approach can be applied in different contexts.

Since the market for “bottom of the pyramid” consumers was identified nearly 20 years ago, product marketing, sales, and distribution have evolved with the help of technology. Here's how two businesses use mobile and cloud-based tools to reach emerging market customers.

The USAID Private Sector Engagement Team is excited to launch the new Finance Wiki on Marketlinks. This resource is intended to help development practitioners deepen their knowledge of development finance.

COVID-19 is a crisis that will have a global economic impact for months to come. This April, we wanted to highlight a few blog posts that show how practitioners around the world are stepping up to support market systems.

This blog post summarizes the Cracking the Nut conference held in October 2019 and presents the downloadable conference report.

OECD Development Matters explains how the Blended Finance Principles provide best practices to push private capital into SDG-aligned projects, programs, and markets.

Blended finance has demonstrated the ability to mobilize additional financing for gender-focused projects and companies that advantage women and narrow the gender gap, with a quarter of all blended transactions demonstrating alignment with SDG 5 (Gender Equality) to date.