Blog

This post shares thoughts from Dr. Michael Kremer on an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Dr. Kremer directs USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures program and is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

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.

A constraint to raising agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is the lack of commercial availability of high-quality seed of improved modern crop varieties. Stakeholders have made a great effort to develop regional variety catalogs to increase the supply of high-quality seed.

Nine projects are funded by NWO-WOTRO to strengthen the Netherlands-CGIAR research partnership on generating insights that contribute to improving seed systems in focus regions within Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa.

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.

USAID/Mozambique engaged in programming, assessing, and leading critical climate change technical assistance activities that support low-emission development strategies (LEDS), building climate change resilience, and strengthening local capacity.

Power Africa teamed up with USAID INVEST to increase access to solar home systems and mini-grids across Kenya. Through Azuri Technology's pay-as-you-go-model, they are projected to provide 390,000 new connections and 6,000 upgraded connections across the country.

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

Najib Seguya of the Feed the Future Uganda Youth Leadership in Agriculture (YLA) activity’s Strategic Activities Fund team discusses key considerations to keep in mind when designing a pay-for-results (PfR) program, also known as performance-based financing.

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.

Village Enterprise works to end extreme poverty in rural Africa by providing groups of three entrepreneurs with seed capital, training, ongoing mentoring, and support for the formation of Business Savings Groups. This post highlights a $5.32m payment-for-results project in the form of a Development Impact Bond.

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.

In August, Marketlinks is focusing on the Pay-for-Results model in global development. This post from the World Bank blog highlights an upcoming project to incentivize dairy suppliers in Tanzania to deliver input bundles for smallholder dairy farmers.

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).

This post highlights two youth dairy farmers through Feed the Future Kenya Investment Mechanism Program with the support of USAID Kenya.

This post offers recommendations on managing the shifts in culture, management and partnering needed when a project shifts from providing direct services to a facilitative market systems approach.

This is the third blog in the Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation building private sector resilience blog series.

In Nigeria, a Pay-for-Results prize competition incents use of Aflasafe to combat aflatoxin contamination and drive demand for higher-quality maize.

This is the second blog the Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation series on building private sector resilience. Stay tuned for the next blog in the private series, as we look at an example of how a more resilient company can provide critical technologies and value-added services after a natural disaster.

Strengthening grain contracts in Mali has the potential to open up farmers' access to products and services they need to operate and grow their businesses, achieving key agriculture development results in the process.

Learning from an initiative to help private maternity homes in Ghana survive the departure of the primary midwife-owner.

Women lead approximately one-third of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets but remain disproportionately underserved. They often face less favorable terms for financing and limited access to essential resources needed to build, sustain, and grow their businesses.