Blog

Browse recent blogs of interest to the Marketlinks community. Use the search box or the filters on the left-hand side to refine the listing of blogs by keyword, topic, and/or region/country.

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Showing 130 results

Capturing End-User Feedback in Rwanda: Piloting a New PSE For Nutrition Tool

Author(s):

Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships
This post was written by Keilah Niyomutabazi, Communications Specialist with Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships Activity led by DAI. The Feed the Future Orora Wihaze (Raise Animals for Self-Sufficiency) Activity is working with local partners and private sector actors in Rwanda to strengthen the animal-sourced foods market system.

Can Platform Data Expand Access to Transformative Credit?

Author(s):

USAID Private-Sector Engagement (PSE)
Digitizing microbusinesses and informal work can help low-income workers and businesses access more and cheaper financial services, but only if the data created by digitization can improve risk evaluation by lenders.

How Can Embedded Financial Services Better Serve Platform Workers?

Author(s):

USAID Private-Sector Engagement (PSE)
Platforms are poised to transform the nature of work low-income people obtain in urban areas of the global South. The digital rails they onboard workers and sellers onto, and the data trails they generate, could transform the kinds of financial services low-income workers can access. But what types of financial services do those workers and sellers really want?

Financial Inclusion, the Gig Economy, and Digital Finance

Author(s):

USAID Private-Sector Engagement (PSE)
Technology is disrupting traditional labor markets and creating new work opportunities for youth and other marginalized groups. The emergence of platforms is changing the nature of the gig economy. Join USAID on August 4 for a webinar exploring this topic.

Financial Inclusion is Key to Fulfilling the Promise of Platform Work

Author(s):

USAID Private-Sector Engagement (PSE)
A growing class of platform workers and sellers are digitally savvy and literate, yet because they are largely from low-to-middle income communities they remain financially excluded and unable to reap the opportunities and mitigate the risks of platform work.

Cooperation Amongst Cooperatives: Proving Cooperative Values Work

Author(s):

Rebecca Skipp
In international development, we often talk about how the private sector is a key ingredient to unlocking a resilient market system. The private sector can: provide an outlet for aggregated product; serve as a technical resource to build capacity and improve quality; offer access to financial capital; and drive sustainable relationships at origin. So, what happens when the private sector also becomes a direct implementer of one of USAID’s projects on the ground?

Feed the Future Business Drivers for Food Safety Celebrates World Food Safety Day

Author(s):

Food Enterprise Solutions (FES)
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.

Investing with a “Refugee Lens”: Private Capital Creates New Opportunities for Refugees

Author(s):

Diana Boncheva Gooley
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. 

Cooperative Policy Engagement in Kenya: Including Local Voices in Legal Reform

Author(s):

Kristin Wilcox Feldman
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.

Join Marketlinks in June as We Explore the Relevance, Versatility and Role of Co-ops in Localization

Author(s):

LuAnn Werner
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?