Blog

Muhammad Siddiquee of CARE provides key takeaways from his presentation during Breakfast Seminar #64, "Understanding the Intangibles: Trust, Risk, Leadership, and Transparency in Value Chain Partnerships." In this video, he discusses the importance of understanding the intangibles in value chain partnerships, particularly when influencing behavior changes and scale-up interventions.

What one almost never expects is the dance that Malian mothers do to support their families during this time.

This summary covers three main points: the recent strategy refresh of the FSP team, the findings of research on Domestic Remittances in 11 African Countries, and how policy makers and market players might use these findings.

On April 18, MasterCard helped Pro Mujer open their latest center in Mexico City’s Milpa Alta neighborhood and in celebration of Pro Mujer President and CEO Rosario Pérez blogged about igniting the entrepreneurial spirit of women.

In their research on the Ghanaian citrus and the Kenyan sweet potato value chains, Jennefer Sebstad and Cristina Manfre were focused on the barriers and development constraints that especially prevent women from upgrading.

Gulnara Shamshieva of Bai-Tushum and Partners discusses the difficult task of responsible microfinance and how her organization has been improving social performance management.

A partnership with USAID, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, and the Visa Foundation aims to address barriers that women entrepreneurs face by building supportive entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging markets.

The ILO Toolkit is a practical resource for organisations and projects to support small and medium enterprises (SME) decide what aspects of SME performance (productivity, working conditions, etc.) to measure, as well as how to measure them.

This report introduces INVEST, a mechanism that uses USAID funding to mobilize private capital for development and overcomes barriers to private sector engagement. INVEST works to build the capability of new and underutilized firms (new partners) by awarding and managing subcontracts.

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

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.

It is essential that markets actively engage people, regardless of gender, to increase the likelihood of generating value-added solutions for society. In this context, gender inequities are not secondary but are of primary concern.

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.

USAID’s Urban Team is pleased to announce the launch of the new and improved UrbanLinks website.

Access to finance is a major pain point in market systems development, but how can we go beyond traditional financing methods to better reach agricultural businesses?

Sunday, March 8, 2020, is International Women’s Day. Here are some previous blog posts from Marketlinks that detail the advancement of gender equality worldwide.

Blended finance has demonstrated the ability to mobilize additional financing for gender-focused projects and companies that advantage women and narrow the gender gap, with a quarter of all blended transactions demonstrating alignment with SDG 5 (Gender Equality) to date.

This blog post summarizes the Cracking the Nut conference held in October 2019 and presents the downloadable conference report.

Sylvia Natukunda is feeling the effects of COVID-19. As the founder of Farm Reap, a Kampala, Uganda-based company that produces five flavors of yogurt, she is putting together a game plan on how to keep her business profitable.

How do agricultural households make decisions about the uptake of new practices or inputs alongside savings, credit, and insurance products? MEDA INNOVATE shares learnings on the potential of non-traditional finance to enable agricultural innovation adoption among smallholder farmers.

How women, gender equality, and social norms are critical to recovering from the COVID-19 crisis.

The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth recently collaborated with Mercy Corp's virtual mentoring program, MicroMentor, to deliver an Arabic platform in Jordan and the MENA region.

Through the 2X Women’s Initiative, DFC invests in businesses and funds owned by women, led by women, or providing a product or service that intentionally empowers women, such as clean water and quality healthcare.

While women are making progress in attracting venture capital and angel funding, they still are vastly underrepresented in the funding league tables.

How is COVID-19 and Senegal’s response to the pandemic affecting the fishing industry as a whole?