Resource Library

USAID’s EAT project led to the development of SeedCLIR. The data-driven tool was designed to enable countries to assess critical seed sector weaknesses, undertake targeted seed sector reforms and effectively gauge the performance of reform activities over time.

This Seed Commercial, Legal, and Institutional Reform study examines the enabling environment for seed across six provinces in eastern DRC. In assessing an informal seed sector in a fragile country context, the study holds key lessons for USAID resilience discussions.

Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation provides insights on supporting partnerships that have commercially launched and/or scaled seed technologies for smallholder farmers in developing countries.

Find resources here from October’s event on YouthSave, including a webinar recording, recap blog, video commentary, and slides from the event.

To overcome challenges experienced when making cash payments in their Aponjon program, Dnet decided to transition to mobile financial services (MFS) with support from USAID’s Mobiles Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mSTAR) project, implemented by FHI 360. This document compares the difference in the payment process between cash and mobile.

USAID is working to identify and mitigate the implicit and explicit barriers to entry to economic enterprise, including those related to persons with disabilities.

Grounded in an overview of CARE’s approach to resilience, this session features evidence and lessons learned from some of CARE’s most successful market engagement initiatives.

The report demonstrates how microfinance can be further leveraged to provide a powerful tool to address one of India’s persistent barriers to the economic advancement of the poor: ill health caused by lack of access to health services.

Mr. Kobor will discuss these recommendations as well as how AML/CFT safeguards can be compatible with financial inclusion initiatives.

Women displaced by conflict or natural disaster adopt new strategies to provide for themselves and their families. These new strategies often place them at risk of gender-based violence. This guidance is based on promising practices on how to design safe economic programs and livelihood activities.

EMMA is a set of tools and guidance notes. It encourages and assists front-line humanitarian staff in sudden-onset emergencies to better understand, accommodate and make use of market-systems. It does not offer a simplistic blueprint for action. However, EMMA does provide accessible, relevant guidance to staff who are not already specialists in market analysis. The EMMA toolkit adds value to established humanitarian practices in diverse contexts.

Can VSLAs contribute to food security by increasing food availability & access? Case studies in Sierra Leon and Tanzania show that they do?

This thesis paper finds that policymakers need to examine local service, verification, and budget capacities when seeking to adopt CCT programs.

The report provides condensed information and lessons learned for Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs in Mexico and Brazil.

This thesis highlights the unintended consequences of CCT programs. It also attempts to identify the causal pathways that led to the implementation of targeted, conditional cash transfer programs in sixteen countries in Latin America.

The Coping Strategies Index is intended to be an accessible tool to measure food insecurity. This field methods manual provides in-depth information on the tool and its application.

This paper by the International Livestock Research Institute reviews the available literature on smallholder commercialization. Of particular interest, the paper discusses the arguments for smallholders to scale-up and commercialize existing food crops versus beginning to produce completely new crops specifically for sale. The production of high-value crops typically generates greater returns for producers, but also typically implies greater risks and barriers to entry. In general, commercialization is found to be positive for families, though the impacts vary.

This brief of a longer paper presents several important findings of relevance to value chain programs.  First, work in the agricultural sector will have a greater impact on nutrition at higher levels of poverty but becomes less important as it declines, when the development of other sectors will be more important to nutritional gains.  Second, economic growth alone is insufficient to address all aspects of child malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.  Examples of Malawi and Yemen illustrate how the development of agricultural value chains that would be appropriate in th

This short note provides an extremely interesting case study of how a value chain approach was used to introduce orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) in Mozambique and Uganda.

This short note presents the approach being used by the Dry Grain Pulse Collaborative Research Support Program in Uganda to improve nutritional outcomes through the development of the bean value chain.  The initiative explicitly applies a sustainable livelihoods framework and related tools, including through its emphasis on using participatory methodologies.  In the context of minimal commercialization and low productivity of the bean crop, despite its high micronutrient content, the project works to address multiple overlapping value chain constraints.  The note describes so

Matching youths' interests, skills and available resources to market opportunities for employment and self-employment.

Links to materials related to youth and either/both microfinance and conflict situations.

Lessons learned from economic livelihood programs aimed at improving the economic future of street children.

Plan outlines the vision, objectives, and conceptual approach for the BDS Knowledge and Practice research.

Pilot Results from the “Fair Exchange” Effort to Improve Pricing and Service Disclosures for Int'l Remittance Transactions