Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.

Third in a series of five blogs on the factors that contribute to sustaining and scaling private sector partnerships from the Enduring Results Study 3.0

(Second in a series of five blogs about the drivers of sustainability in USAID partnerships with the private sector based on the Enduring Results Study 3.0)

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. 

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

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.

Given the primacy of seed for agricultural sector resilience and growth, development actors are eager to address seed needs in the wake of conflict. This post explores how to tailor those investments for fragile contexts in a way consistent with long-term seed market development.

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.

A constraint to raising agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is the lack of commercial availability of high-quality seed of improved modern crop varieties. Stakeholders have made a great effort to develop regional variety catalogs to increase the supply of high-quality seed.

Nine projects are funded by NWO-WOTRO to strengthen the Netherlands-CGIAR research partnership on generating insights that contribute to improving seed systems in focus regions within Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa.

CIAT supports the development of seed systems uniting actors along the value chain to create sustainable seed systems and spur links with formal seed producers.

USAID/Mozambique engaged in programming, assessing, and leading critical climate change technical assistance activities that support low-emission development strategies (LEDS), building climate change resilience, and strengthening local capacity.

KATA Solar is one of a dozen Ghanaian companies offering rooftop solar. Sales of solar products in West Africa’s off-grid energy access market jumped by nearly one-third in the first half of 2017.

This post explores how USAID is mobilizing institutional investors to develop Africa's infrastructure through an initiative called MiDA, which connects American investors to the local partners.

This is the second post in a two-part blog series. This post explores the methodology to quantitatively measure social connectedness.

This is the first in a two-part blog series. It draws on ongoing research in South Sudan funded by USAID/OFDA and implemented by Mercy Corps and the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University. This post presents research findings on the importance of social connections for coping and recovery.

As Marketlinks examines Pay-for-Results this August, check out this blog from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) highlighting compact designed to reduce poverty through economic growth in Cabo-Verde.