Blog

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.

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.

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.

How PNG delivers power to its populace is important to the nation. The Development Strategic Plan calls for carbon neutrality by 2050.

The Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics aims to develop heat-tolerant, high-yielding, and farmer-accepted varieties for South Asia, while simultaneously increasing the research for development capacity of the global wheat improvement system.

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?

Since the market for “bottom of the pyramid” consumers was identified nearly 20 years ago, product marketing, sales, and distribution have evolved with the help of technology. Here's how two businesses use mobile and cloud-based tools to reach emerging market customers.

The Heifer International program in Nepal provided women with goats and training to facilitate sustainable escapes from poverty.

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.

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.

SNV's "Enhancing Opportunities for Women Enterprises" (FLOW/EOWE) programme focuses on supporting rural women in entrepreneurship by addressing the systemic barriers that many rural women face when launching their businesses.

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.

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

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 project conducts critical research and learning activities to disseminate and share with the development community to examine how women leaders of small businesses can better engage in the cashew value chain.

According to an Asia Foundation study of the business environment in Bangladesh, male- operated small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) far outnumber those led by women SME entrepreneurs, and only 69 of the 3,800 firms in the sample have at least one female owner.

ACDI/VOCA, with its partner organization Bai Tushum Fund (BT Fund), will work to reduce barriers to human capital, social capital and business information that limit the growth of women-owned SMEs in the Kyrgyz Republic.

On March 5-10, 2014, USAID’s Women’s Leadership in Small and Medium Enterprises (WLSME) program is sponsoring the 8th National Garment Trade Fair “Fashion Industry 2014: Manufactures and Equipment” hosted by the Association of Light Industry Enterprises.

Citizen Journalism is changing the world by empowering local communities to tell their stories from their own perspectives. WLSME Kyrgyzstan staff members are keeping up with the latest trends in development by holding a multimedia training on 26-29 June 2013 on state-of-the-art mobile journalism or “MoJo” kits to develop skills that will ultimately contribute to the WLSME program’s success.

The Rizal Commercial and Banking Co. (RCBC), one of the largest commercial banks in the Philippines, has introduced an SME business loan program which gives women the opportunity to increase their financial capacity and meet the growing demands of their business.

This month, the WLSME Kyrgyzstan program released a Rapid Market Assessment report to scan industry competitiveness and opportunities for women-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kyrgyzstan.

From June 24 to July 5, 2013, Dr. Alan Osman, an international volunteer from ACDI/VOCA specializing in business development for small and medium enterprises, assisted the Souztextile association in developing and formulating its strategic plan to expand its membership.

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

The Women in Agriculture Network (WAgN): Cambodia project teaches women who manage small farms ways to diversify their operations for improved nutrition.

The USAID Center for Resilience commissioned the Overseas Development Institute, in conjunction with the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN), to conduct research into resilience and poverty escapes in Nepal and other Feed the Future focus countries.