Power Sector Reforms Spur Private-Sector Participation
Image above: Ivy Namasani makes a dress in her tailoring shop in downtown Blantyre, Malawi. Her store suffers from frequent power blackouts that hamper her ability to do business. As part of the Malawi Compact, MCC is supporting the Government of Malawi in its efforts to strengthen the country’s power sector and deliver reliable electricity […]
Expanding Women’s Financial Inclusion: A Win-win for Women and Financial Institutions
Rose, an astute and driven business woman runs a “table banking” operation in the heart of Nairobi. An extension of the traditional village savings and loan associations, “table banking” has gained popularity among poor women in Kenya. Women get together every month and contribute a certain amount of money. Members of the group then borrow […]
Onsite Child Care – An Engine for Business Growth
Business leaders seeking to build a competitive workforce face countless reasons in favor of providing on-site child care. Most agree that supporting healthy, balanced families and growing the ranks of women in leadership is the right thing to do. Despite the obvious benefits, however, the cost of child-care programs dominates discussions in the boardroom and […]
Good Nutrition Should Be Everybody’s Business
Good nutrition should be everybody’s business. That was the message that was echoed through the side meetings during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. At the inaugural ‘Goalkeepers’ event, hosted by Bill and Melinda Gates in New York during UNGA week, the challenge was extended to us all to track the progress we have made […]
Credible Standards Benefit from Multi-stakeholder Standard-setting
By Karin Kreider, Executive Director, ISEAL In an age of multiplicity of approaches to sustainability, the question arises time and again of which of these embody credibility and deliver impact, and what engenders such outcomes. Karin Kreider, Executive Director at ISEAL, considers some of the key elements of credible sustainability standards in a series of […]
Want to Change the World? Allow the Private Sector to Do What it Does Best
For the past week, the world has watched as heads of state and global business leaders convened in New York City for the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. The agenda was far from light. Topics ranged from food security to climate change to the refugee crisis to healthcare. The task at hand – achieving the […]
Last Mile Financial Inclusion: What Will It Take to Reach More Rural Women?
Digital services – with their geographic reach, ease of use, and transparency – are driving financial inclusion and alleviating poverty. But are rural women being left behind? Financial inclusion is unlocking the potential for micro and small enterprises in poor and rural communities to grow, and reducing gender inequalities. Women with access to financial services […]
System Leadership in Practice: Technoserve’s East Africa Coffee Initiative
Read enough blogs, and you might think the formula for increasing smallholder farmers’ incomes is well-known: training + access to (inputs x finance x markets). Simple, right? From 2008-2015, TechnoServe’s East Africa Coffee Initiative reached more than 250,000 farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, increasing their incomes by more than 25%. A new report […]
From Digital Divide to Inclusion: How to Make Digital Finance Work for India’s Women
Often heralded as a panacea for financial inclusion, digital financial services could exacerbate the gender divide, unless there is a concerted effort to develop women-friendly products and channels. Despite recent successes in India’s financial inclusion journey, Indian women still cannot access bank accounts, loans, and other financial services as easily as men. In 2015, only […]
Partnering to Get Every Child Learning
The world is witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record since World War II. Of the unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes, almost one-third are refugees, seeking protection from violence or persecution. The majority of refugee children have lost not only their home, but also their education – so often the […]
Bold Partnerships Can Help Achieve the Global Goals
While trust in business and institutions is consistently questioned, I believe partnerships are providing solutions. The Global Goals are clear that business has a vital role to play in achieving sustainable development. The private sector can bring the scale, expertise, and resources needed to find new solutions. But to have impact we must work in […]
Developing More Responsible Leaders
Dr. Karen Blakely,Head of the Centre for Responsible Management, Winchester University Emerging World’s mission is to ‘help business shape a better future’ and one of our main areas of interest is to understand the role of Responsible Leadership and how best to develop it. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been delighted to work […]
The Money is There to Fight Climate Change
Policy debates on climate change and sustainable development routinely cite the massive numbers needed to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): an additional $1 trillion annually in clean energy investments to limit global warming to below 2 degrees and between $5-7 trillion a year to achieve the SDGs. These numbers are overwhelming […]
New Report: Enabling Smallholder Farmers to Improve Their Incomes
By David Norman, Challenge Director, Business Fights Poverty Many global companies buy significant amounts of the crops they need from smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They may source either directly from smallholders or indirectly, through traders. Companies choose to work with smallholder farmers for many reasons. Smallholders are often the main producers […]
New Report: Unlocking Investment to Deliver the SDGs in Challenging Places
This report, launched today, is the main output of Business Fights Poverty’s Investing for Impact Challenge. We are hosting a roundtable event with contributors, partners and other interested stakeholders at BFP’s event in New York to mark the occasion and discuss the central themes of the report. The report asks the question: “How can […]
Lessons in Corporate Social Innovation
Interview withJustin DeKoszmovszky, Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, INBONIS Justin, first of all, please introduce yourself to the Business Fights Poverty community. I work at the intersection of strategy, sustainability and innovation. I started my career as a strategy consultant, and as time went by, I began looking for ways to apply those skills to […]
Empowering Women in the Economy – Take-aways and Next Steps
CARE was delighted to host yesterday’s event to a full house of business leaders, global experts, and civil society actors to talk about how the private sector can empower women in the economy, including by implementing the UN High Level Panel (HLP) on Women’s Economic Empowerment’s new recommendations. Thank you to all the panellists and […]
Empower a Woman and a Whole Cocoa Community will Thrive
Do you know where chocolate comes from? Do you wonder who produced the cocoa in your chocolate and under what circumstances? Do you care if the chocolate you buy is sourced in a responsible way, with equal access and opportunity for women? Without cocoa there is no chocolate, and without the next generation of cocoa […]
Supporting Corporate Social Innovation to Bring Mobile Services to Smallholder Farmers
Interview with Tegan Palmer, Business Intelligence Manager, mAgri program, GSMA. Q: Tegan, you are the Business Intelligence Manager at the mAgri program at GSMA. What does the mAgri program do? A: We catalyze scalable, commercial mobile services that improve the productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers and benefit the agriculture sector in emerging markets. We […]
Using Customer Data to Crack the Last-mile Distribution Challenge
You can’t manage what you don’t know. While we’d probably all subscribe to that maxim, it’s one that rings especially true for organizations seeking to serve the more than four billion low-income people living at the base of the pyramid (BoP). BoP markets have long been heralded for their potential to drive economic growth and […]