Blog

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.

In our recent webinar discussing the findings from the Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) landscape analysis and case studies on women and youth inclusion in agricultural market systems, we were joined by RisiAlbania and ELAN RDC, two of the activities featured in the case studies. 

In Moldova, the “golden triangle” of collaboration among industry, government, and academia is transforming the technology sector. Here’s the recipe for success from the Moldova Competitiveness Project.

How can implementers use blended finance to mobilize capital? Chemonics and LixCap share their experiences with sequencing and explore its potential.

Congratulations to the three winners from the Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) competition! These case studies demonstrate the use of CLA in the economic growth sector.

Strategic local planning and investment to facilitate housing, personal, and professional risk-taking, new market opportunities, and an entirely new vision of how housing could be delivered using the momentum of private initiative.

The USAID Agro Horizon project helped young entrepreneurs set up a dried fruit processing facility to produce trail mix, which allowed them to enter new supermarket chains and develop business skills.

The Government of Serbia is growing the MSME sector through public, private, education and civil society actors. USAID/Serbia asked the LEO activity to utilize organizational network analysis (ONA) to explore these networks' effectiveness.

Time for two more vignettes! See how Cardno promoted access to finance through financial consulting assistance and how USAID partnered to create the American Bank of Kosovo.

Well, we're about to make camp and need some good campfire tales. Read on for two more vignettes.