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By Carolanne Chanik, INVEST Communications Coordinator About an hour drive outside of the port city of Mombasa lies the coastal town of Ukunda, a modest road stop on the way to Kenya’s Diani Beach. On the outskirts of Ukunda are a smattering of general stores and auto repair shops to serve motorists and day travelers, and a coconut processing plant owned by Kentaste Products Limited.

With pandemic lockdowns crippling labor demand and supply around the world, government interest in social protection and labor market programs in general, and cash transfers in particular, has increased dramatically.

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. 

Like many women, Wamahoro, a native of Rwanda, once worked two jobs, one of which was in the informal sector. “I used to sell my baskets at the local market to supplement my farming income,” she says. At the local market, however, Wamahoro’s handmade baskets sold for only 82 cents a basket — not much in the way of supplemental income.

In the Sahel region of West Africa, small and growing businesses account for nearly 50 percent of new job creation. When these businesses are women-led, the potential to drive growth is even higher: a USAID study found that, globally, these businesses grow revenues 1.5 times faster and jobs twice as fast compared to male-owned businesses.

Find the new guide from January 20, 2021 In the midst of a global pandemic - the effects of which are likely to be felt for years to come - many millions are at risk of losing their livelihoods and unable to access opportunities to work themselves and their families out of, or away from, poverty.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, traditional state-owned clinics and hospitals offer outdated equipment, a lack of well-trained doctors, and inconsistent quality. A surge in COVID-19 cases has overwhelmed the government-run health system in the country.

At first sight, Lebanon and Uganda might not have a lot in common. Yet when it comes to hosting displaced persons, some similarities start to emerge: together, the two countries host an estimated 2.7 million forcibly displaced, making them two of the largest refugee host countries worldwide. 

Whilst there is increasing recognition of unpaid care work and its impact on women’s economic empowerment (WEE), there remains little practical guidance on how to foster its reduction and redistribution among society.

The Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) and USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security undertook a study in Rwanda and Uganda to understand how to better engage youth in agriculture through EAS and the private sector.

Learn how USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures grantees are adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How is COVID-19 and Senegal’s response to the pandemic affecting the fishing industry as a whole?

This blog post highlights how the RisiAlbania project, which sponsors youth employment and skills training programs in Albania, has invested in and adapted online learning and collaboration to local contexts in the face of COVID-19.

To slow the unfolding damage of COVID-19 on the tourism industry, public and private-sector representatives came together (virtually, of course) to chart a new path ahead.

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

The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth recently collaborated with Mercy Corp's virtual mentoring program, MicroMentor, to deliver an Arabic platform in Jordan and the MENA region.

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.

Sylvia Natukunda is feeling the effects of COVID-19. As the founder of Farm Reap, a Kampala, Uganda-based company that produces five flavors of yogurt, she is putting together a game plan on how to keep her business profitable.

USAID is strengthening the fishing sector in El Salvador to help achieve self-reliance in coastal communities, reducing the need to migrate.

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.

Sunday, March 8, 2020, is International Women’s Day. Here are some previous blog posts from Marketlinks that detail the advancement of gender equality worldwide.

This post highlights how officials are stimulating economic reform in Jordan by improving the legal rights of borrowers and lenders, implementing digital financial services and access to credit.

In February, our Marketlinks blog will focus on economic recovery in crisis-affected communities. Throughout the month, we’ll take a deep dive into how communities around the world are building resilience in the wake of a crisis.

With 30% of children under five years old stunted, there are critical vitamin and mineral deficiencies among the poor population in Haiti.

The vast majority of food grown in Africa is by smallholder farmers. Implementing these four recommendations will speed up the process of putting improved seed in the hands of Africa’s food growers permanently.