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USAID CATALYZE Private Sector Development Activity Provides COVID-19 Relief Grants to Build Resilience and Adaptability in Sri Lanka's Apparel Sector.

This post was written by Gabriel Falk for USAID’s Trade and Competitiveness Activity (TCA).

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.

In early 2022, the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) started to emerge from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, boasting rising industrial production, exports to the European Union (EU), increases in wages, and credit growth. The region is ripe for investment, but Russia’s war against Ukraine threatens this recovery, through higher energy and food costs, disruption in supply chains, and interruptions in trade.

Food Enterprise Solutions recognizes that food safety is everyone’s business. And – that food safety is good for business!  Today, June 7, 2022, we are celebrating Food Safety Day 2022 to highlight the exciting work that the Feed the Future Business Drivers for Safety (BD4FS) project is doing with growing food businesses in Senegal to promote safer food handling and ultimately more successful businesses.

By Alexander Riabov, Communications Specialist, DAI-Digital Frontiers 

During the height of the COVID lockdown, beef farmers in South Africa working with the GENEX Cooperative Development Program (CDP) were faced with the complete shutdown of cattle auction sites due to COVID travel restrictions Which meant farmers were not able to sell their product on time. They were losing revenue and they were incurring extra expenses to feed cattle they earmarked for sale. At that moment, CDP mentors saw an opportunity.

Localization is the recognition that local stakeholders know better what their challenges are and how to solve them than do traditional development practitioners. It necessarily positions local stakeholders as solution-makers and implementors while positioning development practitioners as facilitators, trainers, and networkers. 

In Kenya, the law governing cooperative businesses predates the 2010 Constitution. As a newly decentralized nation with 47 ‘distinct but interdependent’ counties, the 1997 national cooperative law needs to change to reflect the new government structure. What is harder to agree on is how. It is important to get it right because cooperatives are key contributors to Kenya’s economy.

Agriculture and food security, democracy, human rights and governance, economic growth and trade, environment and global climate change, gender, and women’s empowerment. What sectors do you work in? Whatever they may be, in the quest to increase local efforts for a more resilient, prosperous, democratic, and inclusive world, there has never been a better time to focus on cooperatives! What is a Cooperative?

Like many countries around the world, gender inequality remains prevalent throughout social and economic systems in Rwanda. Discriminatory gender norms have hindered the opportunity for sustained equality among men and women in many facets of life, including within the cooperative sector. The Rwandan government has shown their commitment to advancing gender equality through numerous laws and policies at the national level; however, generations of subconscious gender biases and mindsets are not so easily changed, continuing the cycle of restrictive gender norms and inequity.

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 is the fourth post in a four-part series exploring impact investment and finance for development authored by Autumn Gorman of USAID's Private Sector Engagement Hub.

This is the third post in a four-part series exploring impact investment and finance for development authored by Autumn Gorman of USAID's Private Sector Engagement Hub.

This blog, written by Catharine Phiri, Senior Technical Adviser for Market Systems, Corus International, was originally posted on Vikāra Institute's website.

By Elina Sarkisova

This month, the Market Corner sits down with two impact investing experts, Sana Kapadia from GenderSmart Investing and Rory Moses, an independent consultant most recently with the G7 Impact Taskforce and previously Associate Director at Palladium Impact Capital. In this month’s first installment of the series, the Market Corner examines where the impact investing field is headed, and the role that systems thinking can play in accelerating that journey.

This post is authored by Gatsby Africa, Lawrence Camp, and Autumn Gorman. This April is about developing a deeper understanding of impact investing and finance for development - and how the development community can facilitate and channel that capital. We look forward to engaging and hearing from you, the Marketlinks community, throughout the month.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest levels of access to education and learning outcomes in the world, according to the Business of Education in Africa report. Taking into account a tremendous financing gap that has only grown since the COVID-19 pandemic started, viable solutions to address this gap through expanded public and private investment are urgently needed.

In this month’s second installment, the Market Corner continues the conversation on adapting market systems development (MSD) programs to address the care economy with MSD and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) experts Ariane Ryan from the World University Service of Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for health supply security to efficiently respond to a pandemic. One key way to ensure supply security of life-saving medicines is through geographic diversification of the sources of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and finished pharmaceutical product (FPP) manufacturing.

The affordability of safe and effective medicines is a critical determinant of equitable access. The share of total health expenditures on pharmaceutical products is extremely variable in the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ranging from 6% (Denmark) to 34% (Bulgaria). However, obtaining accurate information about the affordability of medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is often complex and challenging, and the information remains incomplete.

This month, the Market Corner speaks with market systems development (MSD) and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) experts Ariane Ryan from the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and Ellie Wong from World Vision Australia (WVA) to explore how they are adapting the MSD approach to

For the second installment of the Market Corner blog series, Holly Lard Krueger speaks with sustainable development expert and primary care clinician Liz Willetts about the interconnectedness of our health and environmental systems, the voice missing from global policy decision-making tables, and the true cost of that lack of representation. Access February’s first installment here.

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