Publication database

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) launched the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF) in 2019 with support from the Visa Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The overall goal of AWEF-funded projects is to address the gender financing gap for women-owned small and growing businesses (SGBs) in developing economies. The first round of grantmaking, AWEF Asia, funded eight entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) in Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, and India, as well as programs serving the region as a whole. This report summarizes the lessons learned from these grants.

Conexsus supports small farmers associations and cooperatives that work under a income-generating model that preserves standing forest and other biomes. It focuses on three lines of action: business model, market access, and impact finance.

Fomento Social Banamex is the philanthropic arm of Citibanamex Mexico, and its goal is to reduce inequality in Mexico. It promotes capacity-building for social organizations to better meet the needs of marginalized communities living in poverty. Under this scheme and through its strategic partners, it has supported Unión Majomut, a cooperative of coffee farmers from Chiapas, so that it partakes in the entire value chain and earns a higher income for partner families.

Argidius Foundation supports small and mediumsized enterprises to improve the quality of life of the population living in poverty by promoting entrepreneurship ecosystems that involve strategic partners. To this end, Argidius has supported Thriive (in Guatemala), an organization that provides institutional strengthening and equipment acquisition services to small and medium-sized enterprises, under a “repay the community” model.

Foreign companies operating in a ‘host’ country’s private sector play an important role in fostering inclusive development in these nations. This PhD thesis, exploring the contributions of the Dutch private sector to inclusive development in Kenya’s three most important sectors, tea, flower and renewable energy, finds that private companies operate in a very specific context and must adapt to existing local circumstances that are often not automatically inclusive.

Commissioned by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, this report presents an analysis of four smallholder support programmes in South Africa.

This report reiterates the need for impact investors to raise and direct new capital to help meet the SDGs by 2030 and showcases how select impact investors are taking action. This compendium of five case studies describes how the goals can be woven into the various stages of the investment cycle, as well as investors’ motivations for doing so, advice for other investors, and outlook for the industry. Each case study also provides an example of an investment that contributes to the SDGs. 

CGAP set out to examine pathways to inclusive payment ecosystems in two Sub-Saharan African countries, Tanzania and Ghana, to learn from their experiences. While this analysis could have highlighted the experiences of any number of countries that have succeeded in developing inclusive payment ecosystems, the Tanzanian and Ghanaian experiences hold unique and complementary lessons.

PPPLab interviewed the lead partners of 12 public private partnerships (PPPs) working in Kenya and Ghana. This exploration brief presents their way of working with governments and public sectors.  Within these countries, the food and water sectors have been supported through a number of Dutch grant instruments, which aimed to accelerate development through the advantages of collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Analyses the extent to which the performance of Peruvian microfinance institutions during the period 1998-2002 was linked to policy initiatives by national authorities.