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FROM SILICON VALLEY STARTUP TO LANDMARK ACQUISITION Access to technology is an essential component to development, especially in Africa. Africans use cheap mobile phones to pay their bills, conduct small business, and make calls anywhere and everywhere. However, even a small mobile phone is not useful if power is not available to charge it. Eighty percent of African households lack electric power, which limits opportunities to access information and mobile money, as well as business and educational opportunities. 

The United States has entered into bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) with just 20 of the other 163 members (or 12 percent) of the World Trade Organization. Most U.S. FTA partners represent either developed markets, such as Canada and Australia, or emerging markets, such as Chile and Colombia. However, in the case of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), our missions partner mostly with “frontier markets,” like Ghana and Paraguay.

Resilience is a word we’ve heard a lot during the pandemic. It means having the ability to absorb, adapt, and transform during shocks and stresses. Access to financial resources allows households to make changes in response to current shocks or anticipation of future shocks. Ultimately, a resilient financial system can lead to better food security, improved health, and nutrition. One of the largest shocks in recent history, the COVID-19 crisis, has allowed us to understand just how resilient some systems are.

The IKI has been financing climate and biodiversity projects in developing and emerging countries and in transition economies since 2008 and the IKI wants to ensure that the measures carried out by the projects do not have any negative effects on the people, their living conditions and nature.

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. 

The article originally appeared on Washington Business Dynamics website.

Market systems are inherently social networks, and thus there is an understandable tendency for market actors to do business with those that they know and trust. But neither businesses, nor broader market systems, can perform to their potential by relying only on personal exchange.

This month, our theme is Marketlinks 2021! Throughout January, we will be highlighting relevant policies, projects, initiatives, tools, and other innovations in the sector that have either recently launched or will be launching in 2021. 

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.

The term “enabling environment” often conjures a singular focus on policies, laws, and regulations. These formal rules are important and necessary, but they alone are an incomplete picture of the market system. The Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security (EEFS) project recognizes this, and takes a broader view of the enabling environment which holistically considers the incentives and barriers for market actors operating in complex systems.

To strengthen economic prosperity in the Kingdom of Jordan, bolster female employment. 

The White House–led Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative brings new energy and a comprehensive approach to our mission at USAID.

To strengthen economic prosperity in the Kingdom of Jordan, bolster female employment.

EEFS has developed an analytical guidance document that identifies factors in the enabling environment that support animal source food (ASF) market system success and informs the design of customized field-based enabling environment analysis for ASF systems.

Policymakers and development agencies alike have used Information Technology (IT) as a catalyst for economic development. This technology has been applied to build workforce productivity, accelerate economic development, and improve the business enabling environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to bear the detrimental effects of poor connectivity. As schools, offices, health organizations, and individuals become more reliant upon the internet, more than 3.5 billion unconnected people around the world are at a significant disadvantage.

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.

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

How women, gender equality, and social norms are critical to recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.

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 analyzes the economic implications on food security caused by COVID-19 in relation to previous Ebola outbreaks.

In this article, the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project raises the potential impacts of COVID-19 on food systems in developing countries and the need for rapid examination as the crisis unfolds to inform evidence-based decision-making.

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.

This post outlines the importance of a business response to COVID-19 and details the ways in which businesses of all sizes are working to combat the spread of the virus.

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