Publication database

This Roadmap for the Small and Growing Business (SGB) Sector outlines the expected transformations in the sector over the next ten years, and the challenges and opportunities inherent to such change. It includes a set of 13 recommendationsthat, if adopted, can help sector support organizations focus resources, initiate momentum-building, “catalytic” actions, and mitigate inherent challenges from both within and outside the sector. The Roadmap is meant to provide high-level strategic direction to sector support organizations engaged in strategic or program planning and seeking additional perspective on where to invest time, effort, and resources to advance the promise of SGBs.

The report proposes a framework of synergistic elements necessary to advance inclusion, empowerment and equality. It provides evidence that promoting empowerment and inclusion are necessary approaches to reduce inequality and accelerate progress towards a broad array of Sustainable Development Goals. It draws out policy messages on how an empowerment-and-inclusion approach to policymaking can be fostered.

To boost agricultural development in developing countries, donors are increasingly resorting to blended finance: the practice of combining public development funds with private resources. Blended finance may open opportunities to inject more resources into the food and agriculture sector, but the assumptions that blended finance is inherently beneficial for agricultural development and that it is an efficient way to finance smallholder agriculture, are not supported by the evidence currently available.

This paper argues that private finance blending should be used with caution in rural development until donors can demonstrate the merits of blending using evidence-based results, in particular the added value of blending for development impact. This is especially important given the obligations of donors to make progress on the reduction of social, economic and gender inequalities. The increasing focus on private finance should not obscure the vital role of public finance in promoting inclusive agricultural transformation that benefits small-scale farmers.

This 2019 edition of Africa’s Development Dynamics explores policies for productive transformation in Africa. It proposes three main policy focus for transforming firms: providing business services to clusters of firms; developing regional production networks; and improving exporting firms’ ability to thrive in fast-changing markets.

While APEC strongly recognises the full potential and contributions of women, reports show that women continue to face many barriers to full and productive participation in various sectors and industries. Thus, the Philippines led the conceptualisation and implementation of the project, Women as Prime Movers of Inclusive Business, which looked into the broader aspect of inclusive business both in theory and in practice, and its effects on women’s economic empowerment through a survey, documentary reviews, and a seminar-workshop to compile success stories and best endeavours of APEC member economies.

The ASEAN Integration Report is a flagship publication of the ASEAN Integration Monitoring Directorate of the ASEAN Secretariat and is published periodically. The 2019 edition provides a comprehensive assessment of progress and achievements in ASEAN economic integration since the adoption of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025 in 2015. Chapter 3 references inclusive business as a key approach to achieve "a resilient, inclusive, people-oriented, and people-centred ASEAN".

In 2017, the Government of the Philippines chaired ASEAN, and made inclusive business (IB) one of its deliverables toward the ASEAN vision of a region that is “outward-looking, living in peace, stability, and prosperity, bonded in partnership in dynamic development, and in a community of caring societies.” This study, addressed to policymakers of ASEAN and the ASEAN Business Advisory Council, describes the markets for IB in ASEAN economies, and recommends further actions by ASEAN, the ASEAN Business Advisory Council, and ASEAN members to promote IB.

Commendable progress has been made across many parts of Africa over the past years to increase agricultural productivity, reduce hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, create new employment opportunities for young people and improve the livelihoods of rural communities. Yet, demographic change, urbanization, shifting diets and climatic changes mean that pressure is growing on food systems to make more food and more varied and nutritious food available and accessible.  How African countries position themselves to harness and deploy digital technologies will determine the future competitiveness of African agriculture and its contribution to African economies.

The current report — Byte by byte: policy innovation for transforming Africa’s food system with digital technologies— summarizes the key findings of a systematic analysis of what seven African countries at the forefront of progress on digitalization of the agriculture sector have done right. It analyzes which institutional and policy innovations were implemented and which actions by the private sector and agtech start-ups were taken to increase the development and use of digital tools and services in the agriculture value chain. The objective of this report is to identify interventions that work and benefit farmers and other actors in the value chain and recommend options for policy and program innovation that allow countries to develop a digitalization ecosystem in which digital technologies and services can be developed and used to foster growth and competitiveness in Africa’s agriculture value chains. 

Contract farming (CF) agreements are presently being restructured to form part of more complex Inclusive Business (IB) set-ups. Additional instruments, alongside CF, are implemented to overcome the challenges of CF and to adapt to the policy environment in which the different stakeholders operate. This paper develops a theoretical framework that gives insight into how these complex entities are structured and operate in a developing country context. It finds that a high dependence by the offtaker in the first case study stimulates a higher level of commitment and investment by this stakeholder in the contract arrangement. In turn, this increases the asset specificity aspect, which then requires safeguards to ensure the smallholders adhere to the contractual agreement. A higher dependency in this particular study also resulted in a higher number of smallholders being engaged in the contract, requiring mechanisms to efficiently monitor and coordinate them.