Publication database

Across the world, women play key roles as distributors and retailers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), however, the extent of their participation varies. This learning brief introduces how gender equality can be advanced within the distribution activities of the FMCG sector. It presents an emerging business case, the challenges, and recommendations to address these challenges. The brief is based on IFC projects in Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, and Sri Lanka; desk research; and interviews with market participants. The target audience comprises FMCG sales and distribution teams; FMCG sustainability teams; e-supply chain actors, including business-to business (B2B) distribution platforms; and investors seeking to accelerate gender equality.

This report reflects on the position of social enterprise across 27 countries, across 5 continents and including both developed and developing, stable and fragile countries. It aims to bring evidence together to provide comparisons between social enterprises across the globe, to highlight commonalities and differences, patterns and challenges. This study also considers the policy and support ecosystems for social enterprise in many countries, draws conclusions and makes recommendations based on the evidence.

The ongoing compound and acute crises of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine meet longer-term but no-less pressing crises of social and environmental sustainability in and around agriculture, food and nutrition security. Many international mechanisms are already in place on agriculture and food systems which are almost unavoidably not (yet) sufficiently coordinated. A new generation of due diligence laws recently is added mostly by industrialised countries to that existing mix of policies in place addressing serious sustainability gaps of supply chains into these countries. However, these regulations also bear the risk of generating unintended negative consequences, particularly for smallholder farmers in poor countries.

The Frontiers of Inclusive Innovation Policy Forum was organized by ESCAP in collaboration with Digital Pathways at Oxford, the Inclusive Business Action Network (iBAN), the Honey Bee Network, and the Gujarat Grassroots Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN). It gathered policy makers, experts and practitioners in digital transformation, inclusive innovation, and governance to explore best practices, remaining challenges, and further opportunities to promote inclusive technology and innovation policies.

Drawing on pooled data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) for the years 2014-2020 and published reports from two other global research programs, we investigate the pandemic impacts on women entrepreneurs and business owners with particular attention to those in emerging economies. In addition, we explore differences between women entrepreneurs in low-income and middle-income countries compared to those in countries at higher levels of national income.