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).

The final blog in this series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations demonstrates why going beyond financial support is essential to provide partners with the coaching, networking, and advocacy needed to succeed in particularly complex, fragile and conflict-affected environments. It draws on the experience of the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

This blog, the third in a series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity's experience vetting private-sector actors as potential development partners in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where a paucity of enterprise data, low standards for company operations, and an absence of familiar business norms make it difficult to apply a typical approach to partner prospecting.

This blog, the second in a series inspired by the four take-away messages from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on managing private-sector actors who are problematically invested in maintaining a fragile, humanitarian-dependent socioeconomic system dominated by conflict. It describes the strategy of the Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity for selecting partners and co-creating activities with communities in a conflict-sensitive way in the eastern DRC and explores the team's discomfort with some aspects of the 'bad actor' paradigm.

This blog, the first in a series inspired by the four take-away lessons from USAID’s primer on private-sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected situations, focuses on adding social inclusion and conflict sensitivity as a third dimension to shared value in the partnerships of the USAID Strengthening Livelihoods and Resilience Activity in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

USAID CATALYZE Partners with the Private Sector to Propel the Growth of Women-owned Businesses through Innovative FinancingA CASE STUDYBackground

Several terms have gained prominence in recent times. The SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19, pandemic caused much thinking on localisation and heightened questions surrounding shifting the power. As we moved forward from the worst of the pandemic, lessons have been drawn in different ways by those seeking to make changes happen. Regularly, this is within the specific organisational agenda noting one of the rules of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself. Shifting the power is great – as long as my job is ok?

In the second blog in the series, the authors focus on the importance of using a retail distribution market systems lens to gain insights into the business realities of selling construction products and services to low-income customer segments. For example, low-income customers buy in smaller lots and often have important considerations related to decision-making, coping strategies, and trust that require specific business strategies and tactics. The blog examines a few examples from TCIS’s work in relation to how they applied systemic thinking related to retail distribution to improve housing outcomes for incremental builders.

This post was written by Habitat for Humanity's Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and was Originally Published on the Vikāra Institute's website.

The Case of Aminata Ouedraogo in Burkina Faso

Niger, a landlocked country in the Sahel, faces numerous threats such as terrorism and climate change. As more than 80% of Nigeriens rely on subsistence agriculture, increasing food security and resilience through access to finance for agriculture sector actors is essential to combat the threats the country faces.

The population of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is currently estimated at 1.2 billion people,1 and is projected to double by 2050. The continent’s smallholder farmers (SHF) account for 60% of the population,2 and produce 80% of the food consumed.3 These figures highlight the critical role that agriculture and SHF play in the continent’s food security and development.

How do you rise to the challenge of extending equitable economic opportunities to more than 600,000 women and men in Northeastern Nigeria ?

With more than half of Hondurans younger than 25 and the majority of the population living below the poverty line, young people need access to employment opportunities. Yet, too many Honduran young women and men face dismal economic prospects with 27 percent of youth not in education, employment or training. Compounded by the impacts of climate change and food insecurity, those who cannot find jobs are at risk of falling further into poverty or migrating elsewhere in search of opportunities.

The Linkage Between Food Safety and Sustainability Food loss and waste pose a major threat to both global food system security and sustainability. Postharvest loss is both nutrient and resource loss. When food is wasted, so are the resources required to produce it, namely land, water, and energy. In Africa, with the world’s highest rates of hunger and malnutrition, about a third of all food produced is lost before it ever reaches consumers.

The USAID/World Council of Credit Unions’ (WOCCU) Economic Inclusion Project in March introduced to more than 100 representatives of Peru’s financial sector a formal guide that will help them identify the types of assistance refugee and migrant populations need to access formal financial services, and the best practices to help facilitate their financial inclusion.

USAID’s Amazon Vision is focused on fostering an environmentally friendly economy so that forest-dependent communities can develop their local economies in a sustainable way. Fishing is an important livelihood for Indigenous and other communities living along the Juruá River in Brazil. Both women and men in these riverine fishing communities play essential roles in the fishing industry: while men fish for pirarucu—the world’s largest-scaled freshwater fish—women process, clean, and sanitize the fish. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International’s Senior Regional Director of Latin America. She reflects on the importance of private sector engagement after a recent trip to El Salvador. 

This blog was written by Carolyn Barker-Villena, Corus International's Senior Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In vibrant financial ecosystems, Business Advisory Service Providers (BASPs) play a vital role in unlocking financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). BASPs are business consultants, lawyers, incubation hubs, accountants, and other intermediaries who support actors on the demand or supply side of capital during the transaction process. With the right capacity and experience to support SMEs and investors, they can accelerate and direct large volumes of investment.

USAID CATALYZE Peru increases small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and producer associations’ access to finance through an innovative Pay for Results (P4R) program, which helps financial institutions (FI) minimize their risk in lending while growing their portfolios in underserved regions in the Amazon. CATALYZE Peru has signed P4R agreements with 10 FIs, which have committed to mobilize USD24.1 million to the Amazonia region.

As private foundations and investors take more interest in refugee services, we are seeing more innovative solutions and approaches for delivering services to refugee communities. The Smart Communities Coalition (SCC) brings the humanitarian and private sectors together to foster innovation in refugee settings, and at the SCC’s 5th Annual Meeting, one theme resonated: there is a strong economic case for refugees, who present a large untapped market as productive members of their host communities and would benefit from tailored services, not just humanitarian aid. 

The story doesn’t end when the lights come on for the first time in rural communities – electric service is a powerful foundation for strengthening communities. It’s critical to also provide enough knowledge to help them generate more income, improve healthcare services, and access better education. With electricity, farmers can mechanize their mills, coffee growers can process their own harvest, and dairy farmers can chill their milk.

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

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.