Caroline Ashley

Caroline focuses on how innovative economic models can deliver more inclusive and resilient development.

Caroline has worked on markets, business models and investment approaches that deliver social impact for many years in roles with challenge funds, impact investors, entrepreneurs, corporates, NGOs and policy makers. As Results Director of the DFID Business Innovation Facility, and Sida Innovations Against Poverty programme, she founded the Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business in 2010, then took on hosting it, and acted as Editor of the Hub for 7 years before it transitioned into InclusiveBusiness.net managed by IBAN.

Most recently Caroline led economic justice programmes at Oxfam GB, before moving to Forum for the Future, to lead global systems change programmes to accelerate our transition to a sustainable future.

Do you know who counts as living at the 'Base of the Pyramid'?

21. Jan 2015

And do you know how many conflicting definitions there are? Many!

The 'original' definition of the Base of the Pyramid (IFC/WRI 2007) uses an income level that is several times higher than international poverty lines used by organisations such as the World Bank, in Africa and Asia.

Poverty lines are confusing for many because they are set in purchasing power parity not current dollar terms - for good logical reasons, but who expects an entrepreneur to start doing conversions?

Evidence on which segments of the BoP are actually reached by inclusive businesses is flimsy and variable. Certainly insufficient to guide a new business model design or programme targets.

Users of IRIS indicators more often define their beneficiaries by their demographic (eg rural, female) than their income level, or choose all three income segments.

In summary, to be frank, it's a confusing mess.

And even if you find the definition that is fit for purpose, who should then be counted as a 'beneficiary?' Should you multiply by household size? If you know the number of transactions not the number of clients, does that help? If you're an investor, do you count 100% or a share of those reached?

A new Discussion Paper launched yesterday by the DFID Impact Programmes sorts through the jungle of terminology and definitions. It outlines how the terms BoP and low-income are used by a host of development and investment actors, some of the tools and practice that exists so far, and the key issues for working out 'who counts'.

Tracking Reach to the Base of the Pyramid through Impact Investing is, to be honest, a pretty boring technical paper. I'm allowed to say that, as I helped write it. But given the hours, years, dollars and more spent by businesses, investors and donors to count and claim the number of people who gain from inclusive business at the BoP, it's an overdue contribution.

Much of the analysis was done by the Results Framework team on the DFID Impact Programme, to help us define our own approach, as the Programme aims to benefit five million people at the BoP through impact investment. But the analysis is shared now as a Discussion Paper to help put the material out there, and draw in comments and views on how these definitions should be used going forward.

Notes
The Discussion Paper is published by the DFID Impact Programme and was written by Joe Shamash and myself.

This week also sees the launch of a 4-page Checklist for entrepreneurs, on 'Can you count what counts? How to tally numbers reached at the Ba.... The Checklist, published by the Practitioner Hub, Business Call to Action and the DFID Impact Programme, covers the 4 essential steps to count numbers reached, helping navigate confusions and pitfalls along the way.