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The Linkage Between Food Safety and Sustainability Food loss and waste pose a major threat to both global food system security and sustainability. Postharvest loss is both nutrient and resource loss. When food is wasted, so are the resources required to produce it, namely land, water, and energy. In Africa, with the world’s highest rates of hunger and malnutrition, about a third of all food produced is lost before it ever reaches consumers.

Over 67 million youth are unemployed globally and the majority live in rural areas with limited economic opportunities. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmingly impacted youth whose employment fell by more than twice that of adults in 2020.

This post was originally published on Helvetas' website and written by Chalachew Gebeyehu, SKY Project Manager, Helvetas; Bettina Jenny, Head of Skills Development & Education, Helvetas; and Sabrina Würmli, Advisor for Skills Development, Helvetas. 

Worldwide, the private sector is playing an unprecedented role in shaping opportunities that improve the lives in the countries and communities that USAID supports. For six decades, USAID has partnered with the private sector to solve the world’s most complex development challenges and to help countries accelerate development progress. 

In Pakistan, promising small and medium-sized enterprises are turning their innovative ideas into reality — and improving livelihoods — with a boost from a special grant fund.

Feed the Future Cambodia Harvest II is a five-year project, now at its halfway point, working to help Cambodia accelerate horticulture sector growth and strengthen the horticulture market system. This case study describes Harvest II’s blended buyer-led and market systems development approach, citing examples of progress to date and posing several learning questions about the project moving forward.

Promising results are unfolding as project staff begin to think and work politically on one USAID project in Timor-Leste.

Growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is an important goal of much donor assistance. However, development practitioners do not always articulate theoretical frameworks linking interventions to outcomes of sales or employment growth.

While women make up a large part of Bangladesh’s agricultural workforce, they are rarely at the forefront of commercial agriculture. Engaging women in more diverse agricultural activities could change this.

The Enhancing Opportunities for Women’s Enterprises programme and the Centre for Industry and Trade is implementing a strategy to facilitate access for rural women entrepreneurs to markets and strengthen linkages between different actors in selected agricultural value chains.

Economic development programs are increasingly shifting to a system change approach instead of direct delivery service.

Women Empowerment in South Punjab through Investment in Rural Economy (WEinSPIRE) was selected as one of the winners of Chemonics’ recent innovation contest.

This post examines difficulties in measuring inequalities and differences in women's participation in the labor market as well as ways forward in the field.

Read how private sector-led technical and entrepreneurial trainings are playing an important role in boosting women's economic empowerment in Bangladesh.

Learn how the PAGE program is empowering adolescent girls and building their job skills in schools in low-income communities in New Delhi, India.

By offering a secure way to store money and access financial services, mobile money has the potential to increase the efficiency of programs and significantly improve the resilience of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh.

Learn how a direct sales model solves a market need in Bangladesh.

A few small changes in the market system—collection points closer to home, machines that provide more transparency, and aligning the needs of buyers and producers—can provide all of these benefits because together they solve the market failure.

The LEO project is speeding towards the finish line! LEO’s broad goals of increasing the capacity of donors and implementers to design, implement and evaluate market systems projects have led to some landmark publications.

Find out what the case of the feed milling industry in the Philippines reveals about the importance of access to credit.

In Indonesia, MercyCorps is pioneering a program to help MFIs prepare for natural disasters, respond quickly when clients are in need, and stabilize the financial sector serving low-income people post-disaster.

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

Underdevelopment and missed market opportunities come with real costs, especially for women.

Two more vignettes are here, hot off the presses! Read on to find out how two more projects mobilized private capital successfully.

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