Blog

With more than half of Hondurans younger than 25 and the majority of the population living below the poverty line, young people need access to employment opportunities. Yet, too many Honduran young women and men face dismal economic prospects with 27 percent of youth not in education, employment or training. Compounded by the impacts of climate change and food insecurity, those who cannot find jobs are at risk of falling further into poverty or migrating elsewhere in search of opportunities.

USAID CATALYZE Peru increases small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and producer associations’ access to finance through an innovative Pay for Results (P4R) program, which helps financial institutions (FI) minimize their risk in lending while growing their portfolios in underserved regions in the Amazon. CATALYZE Peru has signed P4R agreements with 10 FIs, which have committed to mobilize USD24.1 million to the Amazonia region.

Frenki Kozeli, Julian Guelig, and Dany Khy share three approaches to forming private sector engagement partnerships that can be replicated and tailored across development contexts.

Despite the fact that Guatemala is an upper-middle-income country, almost 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. Agriculture is one of Guatemala’s main economic drivers; it has employed at least one in three Guatemalans since 2000; and in 2018, the agriculture value added was ten percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

This blog post explores how one USAID initiative got banks on board to provide $1 billion in services in rural Colombia and how this approach can be applied in different contexts.

USAID is strengthening the fishing sector in El Salvador to help achieve self-reliance in coastal communities, reducing the need to migrate.

With 30% of children under five years old stunted, there are critical vitamin and mineral deficiencies among the poor population in Haiti.

Nearly 75% of the Guatemalan population is employed through small- and medium enterprises, yet local laws restrict credit unions' abilities to provide loans to SMEs.

Using a decentralized water treatment and distribution system, Jim Chu, the founder and CEO of dloHaiti, is bringing safe, affordable water to thousands on the island. Chu recently participated in diaspora engagement roadshows hosted by USAID INVEST, which encouraged members of the Haitian diaspora to invest in the country’s private sector. Jim Chu loves flying. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor began paragliding in 1993. Over the last two decades, he’s participated in the sport all around the world.

Driving interoperable payments in Latin America through the mobile platform BICOO to address key barriers facing the unbanked.

The USAID-funded Climate Economic Analysis for Development, Investment, and Resilience Activity promotes clean energy lending by commercial banks in Central America. Seven banks in the region now have energy efficiency and green credit lines for small- and medium-sized businesses.

This post introduces USAID’s Creating Economic Opportunities project, which aims to help qualified people find jobs that give them the stability and prosperity they want for their families.

USAID's Economic Competitiveness Project is helping to provide technical assistance to micro and small companies in innovation, technology adoption, manufacturing practices, marketing, and more.

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.

Under the landmark peace agreement, the Government of Colombia has committed to addressing land issues by formalizing property rights across the country, organizing the national registry, and recovering lands that belong to the state.

With support from the Cooperative Development Program (CDP), Equal Exchange set out to answer if small farmers are really too poor to invest. In 2010, the CDP and Equal Exchange began working together with six farmer organizations in Latin America building member investment and savings programs.

Read how a project in the Haitian apparel sector is taking on the challenge of demonstrating development projects' indirect, broader systemic impacts.

At the SEEP 2014 conference, a panel on the ‘Big Data’ Revolution discussed ways to use new sources of information to adapt service delivery and improve approaches to inclusive market development.

Through PISCES, the Program for Investment in the Small Capital Enterprise Sector, operational from 1979 to 1985, USAID and its partner organizations began to discover the principles of success for lending to the poor, opening the way for the microfinance industry.