Blog

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.

This post was written by Dan Hudner, Market System Resilience Measurement Lead at Mercy Corps.

In March 2020, the Government of Uganda introduced a series of preventative measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the country. These measures, including the closure of businesses and restriction of movement, were anticipated to have an impact on the economy and on agricultural production. USAID/Uganda was interested in understanding the impact of COVID-19 and these government measures on the agricultural market system, to anticipate how resilient the system would be and to identify opportunities to adapt existing programming or introduce new emergency measures.

In Somalia, USAID is helping blunt the economic impact of COVID-19 by supporting financial institutions and contributing to Somalis’ ability to cope with, and build resilience to, the COVID-19 crisis.

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. 

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

When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck, the data science company Fraym understood its unique product was critical in mounting the most effective global COVID-19 response at scale.

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

USAID's Somalia Growth, Enterprise, Employment and Livelihoods project is responding to COVID-19 by employing a strategy across its value chains to mitigate the impact of distruped supply chains and damage to the private sector.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learn how sequencing interventions and a defined exit strategy can create a sustainable pathway to increase household resilience.

Digital services — with their geographic reach, ease of use, and transparency — are driving financial inclusion and alleviating poverty. But are rural women being left behind?

Check out this post-event Q&A with presenters from June's Microlinks webinar, Supporting Resilient Livelihoods in Challenging Environments.

Learn more about the MERS 3rd Edition and how thinking around market systems and livelihoods has advanced.

Practitioners discuss findings around the diffusion of innovations within market systems in the Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Program, the Senegal Nataal Mbay program, the Zambia PROFIT PLUS program and the Ghana ADVANCE II program.

Learn how the Government of Ethiopia moved away from annual emergency responses and took decisive action to tackle food insecurity in a systematic manner by launching the Productive Safety Net Program.

When a market system isn’t humming along as it should, something must be missing. Read on for examples from Cambodia and Guinea.