-
Linking Supply Chains, Farmers and Sustainability : A New Rainforest Alliance report analyzes the financing needs for investing in sustainable supply chains
Development agencies, private sector actors and NGOs are working with farmers globally to help them adapt their farming to the needs of the 21st century. But the financial sector argely has been behind the curve. With The Citi Foundation and Rabobank, the Rainforest Alliance launched a finance initiative focused injecting sustainability into supply chain finance.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
Financing Business Skills Development for Impact Enterprises: Who Pays?
One of the main barriers preventing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from getting to scale in emerging economies is a lack of core business skills. To meet this need, a plethora of stand-alone business incubators and accelerators have emerged over recent years. All play a critical role in preparing companies for the market, but who ends up footing the bill?
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
NexThought Monday: Are Managers Ready to Lose Control?: The bottom-up development perspective in base-of-the-pyramid ventures
Does inclusive business mean that the poor are only included in “our” businesses? Or should it also mean that they have their own flourishing enterprises and we become integrated in their activities? What if the poor want to play a bigger role than being just instruments included in a process that was defined by outsiders?
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Weekly Roundup: SOCAP Discounts, Data Delivery, And Spontaneous Innovation
When summer begins to wane, SOCAP preparations begin to warm up. Yes, it’s hard to believe that Social Capital Markets, that magnetic north on the compass of many impact investors, is less than two months away. Plus, a fresh batch of BoP-related studies.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- research
-
A Market for Preservation: Tropical-forest friendly products, entrepreneurship and consumer choice
CleanStar Energy, is social enterprise that focuses on bringing sustainable bioenergy solutions into developing markets while preserving delicate tropical forest communities. It’s the type of business being sought by the Tropical Forest Challenge, which aims to identify the best for-profit solution – an idea, start up, or company with a positive impact on tropical forest biodiversity.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Transportation
-
With Business Training, Lenders Stitch Kashmir’s Private Sector Back Together
Young business people in Kashmir often find processes slow, corrupt and inefficient, leaving them disillusioned and leading them to give up. But local government is taking steps to streamline the registration process, and providing support to young entrepreneurs through its Entrepreneur Development Institute. J&K Bank has partnered with the local government and Mercy Corps to develop a "Youth Start-Up Loan Scheme" at a competitive interest rate and worth up to 35 percent of the project’s costs.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
16 Stories:A New Book, ‘Llenando Espacios’ (Filling Spaces), Reveals Colombia’s Social Enterprise Prowess
As part of the forum “Social Entrepreneurship: A new look at the development of Colombia” last month at Bogota at the College of Higher Studies in Administration (CESA), Juan David Aristizabal presented his new book (written in Spanish) Filling Spaces: A Book about Social Entrepreneurs.
I had the chance to chat with him about his new book, which tells the storyies of 16 Colombian social entrepreneurs across multiple sectors.- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
-
New Data Reveals Massive (Potential) Mobile Money Market for the Poor : Across Africa millions are sending huge volumes of domestic remittances – mostly in cash
A few months back I wrote this quick piece highlighting some preliminary findings from data that was just coming in from a major study the Gallup organization did for us.
Now, the full data set is in and the results are quite interesting.
In collaboration with Gallup, we surveyed 11 countries in Africa (including Kenya) on the payment habits of the adult population. To my knowledge, this is the largest study of its kind – tracking money transfer and payment behavior in the developing world.- Categories
- Education, Technology
