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Mandera County, the second poorest county in Kenya, grapples with recurrent drought, seasonal flooding, violent extremism, and economic alienation from the rest of the country. Over 89 percent of Mandera’s 900,000 residents live below the poverty line.

The December 7, 2023 Finance Champions meeting featured four finance-focused presentations on:

Society Development Committee, or SDC, based in Faridpur, Bangladesh, is a microfinance partner of the Feed the Future Bangladesh Livestock and Nutrition Activity, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA. Through this partnership, thousands of people working in Bangladesh’s livestock sector have benefited from microfinance products.

Accessible finance is vital for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yet, oftentimes, they struggle to access financing from traditional sources because they lack the knowledge to produce comprehensive financial documentation required by banks. Meanwhile, financial institutions may perceive small businesses as higher risk clients due to their size, limited track record, and insufficient collateral. In many countries, like Rwanda, financial institutions have limited knowledge in the livestock value chain financing opportunities compared to crops value chain.

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.

In rapid response to the abrupt trade disruptions resulting from Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea—a tactic in its war on Ukraine, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Agriculture Resilience Initiative (AGRI)-Ukraine. AGRI-Ukraine is critical to supporting Ukraine’s export and agricultural sector needs, which are expected to remain vulnerable to the Russian Federation’s aggression in the months and years to come.

How to measure LGBTQIA+ inclusive market systems development

The Finance Champions group was established in March 2023 with the aim to share innovative approaches being tested by USAID Missions, Bureaus and Independent Offices and to exchange learning on the topic of mobilizing finance in development. This group, which is internal to USAID, meets every six weeks, and has grown from an initial group of 20 to 160 members.

Developed through a partnership between the USAID and Mastercard, Project Kirana focused on helping women micro entrepreneurs gain the tools they need to grow their businesses in India. Project Kirana recognized the complex set of problems encountered by women micro entrepreneurs in India: limited business and digital financial capabilities, and limited access to formal financial services. By equipping women entrepreneurs with the knowledge and tools they needed — including financial and digital literacy expertise, business management skills, and strategies for addressing cultural barriers — over 2,500 women were able to grow their small retail businesses and increase their incomes.

Around the globe, communities are faced with complex challenges and facilitating and sustaining peace remains of critical importance. While peacebuilding programming is implemented throughout the world, little is known about the overall impact and return on investment of these programs. Historically, program evaluations in this field (and in international aid and development broadly) have offered information on outputs, for example the number of people who participated in training, but this information remains insufficient to truly understand the impact.

Lack of access to finance is universally regarded as one of the most significant constraints to economic development. Without affordable and appropriate capital, Northern Kenyan individuals and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are prevented from participating in the formal economy, capitalizing on business opportunities, investing in their livelihoods, and responding to shocks, such as natural disasters.

This blog was originally posted on Climatelinks as a collaboration during COP28.

In a three-part blog series, we share lessons on the process of evaluating the Cambodia Feed the Future Harvest II program focused on what systemic changes the program made progress on in the horticulture sector. (Full report here). The lessons are:

In this three-part blog series, we share lessons on the process of evaluating the Cambodia Feed the Future Harvest II program focused on what systemic changes the program made progress on in the horticulture sector. (Full report here). The lessons are:

In this blog post in the Equitable Inclusion series by the Canopy Lab, I spoke with USAID FTF Transforming Market Systems Activity (TMS) Deputy Chief of Party, Dun Grover, about the crucial role their inception phase played in shaping how they, as a market systems develop

If you’ve ever tried to evaluate the extent of system change, you know it’s a fascinating—but tricky—process.

Have you ever wanted to see where USAID provides funding, or what USAID invests in?

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.

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.

Start-ups and fast-growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need financing to grow—and that financing must be affordable. Yet, the return on investment that finance providers, such as banks and investors, require (to cover their costs and risks) often exceeds what SMEs can afford.

Around the world, donors like USAID are focused on helping small businesses thrive. These businesses create the lion’s share of formal jobs in emerging markets, and they provide the goods and services local communities need. Still, many small businesses struggle to grow because they can’t access the financing they need. Enter transaction advisors: private sector firms that work with small businesses and investors, structuring and closing investment deals between them.

What does protecting watersheds have to do with the coffee market system? Surprisingly, a lot! Since 2014, Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) Blue Harvest Program has worked with local partners in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua to restore water resources and transform coffee livelihoods. The mountainous, coffee-producing areas of Central America provide drinking water for millions of people. As land degradation and climate change threaten coffee production and contribute to growing water scarcity, the link between the coffee market system and natural resource management has never been more important.