Bringing you the ingredients & results of inclusive business virtually, with BCtA & BfP

After a really successful end of pilot event on the 12th of December in London, the Business Innovation Facility (BIF) team were keen to share their findings with people in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia where the lessons learnt from the pilot would, we hope, be most useful. So with much trepidation about the online logistics involved, we set up our webinar on Monday the 16th with the help of our partners Business Call to Action and Business Fights Poverty (both of whom are webinar experts and ensured everything went smoothly!).

And the online discussion turned out to be as lively and interesting as the actual event the week before. The BIF panel included Caroline Ashley, Results Director, Carolin Schramm, M&E Manager and Soji Apampa, Nigeria Country Manager. Their presentation (that can be accessed here) addressed the key findings from the three and a half years of the BIF pilot and looked to answer three questions:

What commercial and social results can inclusive business deliver?

What are the key ingredients of inclusive business models?

What is the role of donor-funded technical support?

The presentation prompted plenty of questions from our engaged audience. There was plenty of interest in the BIF projects being mentioned and the difference between consumer and producer-focused projects. Details on every project in the BIF portfolio can be found here. Attendees were also understandably interested in the M&E process that the team had followed to come up with the findings being presented. The full 85 slide review of the entire portfolio has more details about how the figures were calculated as well as plenty of other quantitative and qualitative data about the portfolio.

Soji Apampa's presentation on two agribusiness models in Nigeria generated a number of questions from attendees, particularly about the smallholder finance scheme set up by Stanbic Bank. You can delve much deeper into Stanbic's model and the challenges it has faced putting it in place in this case study. BIF has also published six other case studies on some of the most interesting businesses in the portfolio that can be found here.

What kind of support does BIF provide to businesses? Do businesses run the risk of becoming dependent on donor support? A couple of the questions put to Caroline Ashley during her presentation on the value of external support. While some projects haven't found BIF support provided much value, the majority feel it has been useful, and the results emerging from the portfolio certainly suggest that external support is having a positive impact. For a summary of the findings from the portfolio, see our Spotlight on the ingredients and results of inclusive business.

The attendees had a number of other questions related to partnerships, business models and donor support and our panel answered as many as possible before time ran out. If you'd like to hear the full discussion, you can access the recording here (not longer available). To get the answers to some questions that weren't addressed in the webinar, we have released a number of publications that look at the BIF portfolio in detail and provide invaluable practical insight on inclusive business in general. These can all be found on our findings page.

We enjoyed bringing this webinar to our members and will hopefully be doing some more early next year. Stay tuned to the Hub for new announcements!

More Information

Learn more about our partners Business Call to Action and Business Fights Poverty