Blog

This post summarizes key themes and takeaways from the 2019 Cracking the Nut conference held in Dakar, Senegal from October 14-15.

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 post shares an interview with Roula Moussa, the CEO and founder of Netways and DiasporaID, a digital platform that connects and promotes collaboration among Lebanese diaspora communities.

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

This post highlights the USAID-funded Cooperative Development Program, which promotes measurable impacts on women’s earning potential and leadership in cooperative organizations in Rwanda.

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.

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.

USAID’s Value Chains for Rural Development project uses an inclusive, market systems approach to support smallholder producers, farmer groups, agribusinesses, and community organizations.

This post introduces an interview with Kristin O'Planick for the System Insight Podcast about a new framework for assessing market systems resilience being designed by USAID.

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.

This post shares an overview of the Digital Credit and Women's Economic Empowerment Convening 2019 and introduces a resource by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) that explores four steps in conducting impact evaluations for measuring women's empowerment.

Data protection is a primary focus of the humanitarian sector. In late 2016, USAID supported a digital cash transfer preparedness grant meant to help NGOs be equally well-prepared to offer (digital) cash as to offer other modalities of assistance (e.g. in-kind items).

The Government of Morocco is addressing the challenge of providing youth with skills to enter complex, highly competitive global industries. Morocco's Employability and Land Compact introduces a scalable model for secondary education to improve graduates' employability.

This post spotlights an interview with Lala Faiz and Cameron Khosrowshahi from the USAID INVEST team on mobilizing private capital.

Blended finance continues to gain traction. Used properly, blended finance channels private capital into areas where it can have a positive impact while generating solid returns. It develops markets and builds local capacity. However, blended finance is far from meeting its full potential.

In a five-part blog series, the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project examines how the enabling environment shapes market systems outcomes. Each post spotlights a key area of the relationship and its relevance to informed program design and smart interventions.

This month, Marketlinks is highlighting the topic of Youth Employment.

This post explores the role of the enabling environment — the political economy in particular — in influencing the transition from personal exchange to impersonal exchange as a crucial step toward market transformation.

In June, we're excited to take a look at political economy analysis (PEA), a development approach to inform programs and project activities from a politically-minded place.

As USAID programs evolve to adopt a market systems approach, implementing partners must adapt their monitoring and evaluation approaches to better capture dynamics of complex systems change.

Most developing countries need more 'fiscal space' to finance the investments required to develop and become self-reliant. In this blog post, USAID's Steve Rozner argues that when it comes to creating fiscal space, it's the size of the pie, not the slice that matters.

This is the second blog post on what Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) can learn from market systems.

Applied political economy analysis can offer insights leading to recommendations about how to influence key decision-makers, thereby facilitating the change necessary to foster a more conducive enabling environment for market systems to thrive.