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This month, Marketlinks is highlighting the best of 2021, including the standout learning and knowledge-sharing content that has resonated the most with our community.

For most West Africans, homeownership is out of reach. Rapid population growth and urbanization have created a housing shortage, exacerbated by the lack of access to affordable mortgage loans to finance purchases. With support from USAID INVEST, the Caisse Regionale de Refinancement Hypothecaire (CRRH) is bringing a new investment opportunity to U.S. markets that offers investors attractive financial and social returns — and West Africans the resources to make homeownership a reality. By Lauren Yang, INVEST Communications Advisor

USAID is supporting renewable energy in Vietnam — through strategic, discrete interventions to remove barriers for the private sector. By Kristin Kelly Jangraw, INVEST Director of Communications

Over the past year, donors, implementers, and other development actors have shared their technical learning, best practices, and insights with the Marketlinks community to help advance inclusive, sustained, and resilient economic growth. All month long, we’ll be spotlighting the top Marketlinks content of 2021, including blogs, resources, and webinars.

All month long, Marketlinks is spotlighting its top market-led development content from 2021.

Senior market systems development (MSD) leaders create the culture and space for experimentation, adaptive management, and learning. These Chiefs of Party (CoP), Team Leaders, Deputy Chiefs of Party, etc. can play a critical bridge between technical and operational departments within a program. They also set the tone for prioritizing diversity and inclusion.

CEO of Development Partners International (DPI) Runa Alam talks about the history of Pan-African private equity, the potential for institutional capital to drive the continent’s development, and the role of the Prosper Africa initiative in catalyzing two-way trade and investment between the United States and African nations.

By Emily Langhorne, USAID INVEST In 2019, Chicago Public School Teachers’ Pension and Retirement Fund made its first commitments on the African continent. Since 2017, Chief Investment Officer Angela Miller-May participated in the U.S. Government’s Mobilizing Institutional Investors to Develop Africa’s Infrastructure (MiDA) Program. Through the program, Miller-May learned about the continent’s investment opportunities, and, for the first time in her life, she visited Africa.

This post was written by Lauren Yang, USAID INVEST Communications. Gender Lens Investing has gained momentum as a means to push for a more equitable spread of capital, generating much-needed financial returns and benefits for women. However, the need goes beyond just getting capital into the hands of women — how can businesses make gender equity not merely an add-on, but a fully integrated part of their operations?

Institutional investors like pension funds have deep pools of capital. If even a small percentage were invested in African infrastructure, it would go a long way towards helping African countries finance their own development, and providing U.S. investors with higher returns than what is possible in developed markets.

Many women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in West Africa fall into the “missing middle.” They are too large for funding from microfinance institutions and too small and risky for banks and other sources of traditional finance. WIC Capital, a $20 million investment fund managed by the Women’s Investment Club Senegal, seeks to exclusively target women-led, early-stage businesses in West Africa. 

By Lauren Yang, USAID INVEST Communications

By Yasmine Williams, INVEST Senior Communications Advisor South Africa is home to millions of small and medium-sized enterprises. These businesses create jobs and drive economic growth — they are vibrant, innovative, and undercapitalized.

An abridged version of this article was published in Devex. Read it here. By Vanessa Holcomb Mann and Jessamy Nichols, USAID INVEST Donors like USAID have added a powerful tool to their toolbox: catalytic funding.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for health supply security to efficiently respond to a pandemic. One key way to ensure supply security of life-saving medicines is through geographic diversification of the sources of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and finished pharmaceutical product (FPP) manufacturing.

Women’s labor force participation is a critical determinant of women’s economic empowerment, and yet, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that 606 million women around the world are not working or seeking employment because of unpaid care responsibilities.

In this month’s second installment, the Market Corner continues the conversation on adapting market systems development (MSD) programs to address the care economy with MSD and gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) experts Ariane Ryan from the World University Service of Canada

On February 24, 2022, the USAID Private Sector Engagement (PSE) Hub hosted a webinar in its Mobilizing Finance for Development (MF4D) series. The post-event resources include key event highlights and answers from the moderated Q&A.

This post was authored by Mike Field, Vikāra Institute.

USAID’s $1.5 million Women’s Global Development Prosperity: Expanding Women’s Labor Force in Lebanon (EWLFL) Project (2020 – 2023) identifies women business owners or entrepreneurs. The Lutheran World Relief-led project enables women to enhance their skills, and affords opportunities to benefit from mentoring relationships and support networks.

Almost every family in the world will need care services for someone in their household at some point in their lives—whether that is childcare, elder care, disability services, or help with household chores.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest levels of access to education and learning outcomes in the world, according to the Business of Education in Africa report. Taking into account a tremendous financing gap that has only grown since the COVID-19 pandemic started, viable solutions to address this gap through expanded public and private investment are urgently needed.

By USAID’s Digital Finance Team and Anna Tyor, Digital Finance Specialist, DAI Project Kirana is currently training 3,000 women shop owners and managers in the cities of Lucknow and Kanpur, working to optimize business operations and leverage digital and financial tools to improve decision-making, personal agency, and revenue.

This post is authored by Gatsby Africa, Lawrence Camp, and Autumn Gorman. This April is about developing a deeper understanding of impact investing and finance for development - and how the development community can facilitate and channel that capital. We look forward to engaging and hearing from you, the Marketlinks community, throughout the month.

This post was authored by Jamie Gow, Sonali Master, Sweta Saxena, and Micaela Arthur.