SABMiller Entrepreneurship World Map
Every year SABMiller commits millions of dollars to supporting entrepreneurship projects in many of its markets. This year alone, SABMiller – including our Foundations – invested over US$6 million in competition programmes to foster entrepreneurial activity worldwide. Through our projects, we aim to create the support networks that micro and small enterprises need to survive […]
Business Engagement in Fighting Rural Hunger and Poverty
Government assistance is simply not enough to tackle rural poverty. The U.S. food security program, Feed the Future, is a relatively new effort to target key countries and communities to promote food security. It is vitally important and has been carefully-designed and implemented. Feed the Future is focused on 19 countries; but food security and […]
Functional Impact Investing Ecosystems Reduce Risk
Impact investors are typically seen as part of the supportive ecosystem inclusive businesses require to start, succeed and go to scale. The second Frankfurt Round Table on Social Finance on June 4, 2013, in Frankfurt, made it clear that impact investors themselves need a supportive ecosystem to reduce costs and risks of investments. The round […]
OECD Report Highlights Role of Vocational Education
The annual Education at a Glance report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development takes a particularly hard look this year at the link between youth unemployment and vocational education in the current difficult economic situation. Countries such as Switzerland and Germany with an above-average share of vocational graduates have seen a higher rate […]
Trade and Investment for Development
Trade and investment are increasingly important tools for international development. Market openness is a critical factor in promoting growth, and openness to trade raises national incomes. If done properly, trade can have significant development impacts for national governments, small producers, and individuals. Yet U.S. policy for trade, investment, and development is seen as separate rather […]
Pearson launch online MBA programme
Increasingly, students who need a flexible path to earning a degree are looking to online learning programs to access quality higher education. In response, higher education institutions around the country are investing in comprehensive educational services that develop and scale online programs that are high quality, rigorous and drive student achievement. Pearson Embanet, the leading […]
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals?
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals? This was the question I was asked to address on a panel at the EU High-Level Conference on Education and Development on 23 May, aimed at strengthening the momentum for education as the foundation for a new international development framework. The panel […]
The Niger Delta Partnership Initiative: Corporate Social Enterprise in Action
All too often corporate social responsibility has, over the years, meant occasional grants and handouts to people in need, with little regard to achieving sustainable development in the long run. Things are changing. As governments struggle with tight budgets, and business leaders discover the dangers of operating in volatile regions of the world where residents […]
Nairobi, Thriving Entrepreneurship Hub of East Africa
the A Factor and Curator, Innovation Tours In her TED Talk, The danger of a single story, my favourite Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how dangerous it is to reduce a person, a culture, a continent to a unique and biased perception. The viral Youtube video “Africa for Norway” with African actually raising funds […]
Pearson and CBI launch UK education and skills report 2013
Educators, employers and policy makers gathered at our HQ in London today to formally launch the findings of CBI/Pearson education and skills survey 2013. This annual survey provides a valuable insight into how well the skills needs of some of the UK’s largest and most successful businesses are being met. The findings from the survey […]
The Private Sector as the Driver of Development
Nine out of ten jobs in the developing world are in the private sector. Hum-drum enough, but for the development community this is something of an epoch. There is a growing consensus in international development that the private sector is the engine of development and donors and development stakeholders should design and plan around this […]
Land rights, not land grabs, can help Africa feed itself
Nothing better sums up Africa’s extraordinary mixture of challenges and opportunities than agriculture. On the one hand, Africa is home to one in four of the world’s hungry and is the only continent which fails to grow enough food to meet its own needs. Yet it has also half of the world’s unused land suitable […]
Pearson helping UAE to develop their school leaders
30 principals, vice principals and teachers from the UAE arrive in the UK tomorrow as part of a unique development programme run by Pearson. The School Leadership Programme, which is sponsored by the UAE Ministry of Education, hopes to use global training opportunities to improve the quality of teaching skills to international levels, as well […]
Vote for Gamechanging Business Models in Health
Vote to help transform health systems in markets around the world! Earlier this year, Ashoka Changemakers and Boehringer Ingelheim launched Transforming Health Systems: Gamechanging Business Models, a competition in search of innovative business models that are solving systemic health problems in different markets around the world. An expert panel of judges has selected five finalists […]
Inclusive Agribusiness: Linking Smallholder Farmers to Markets
Whilst working in agricultural development in Malawi I find that the same two questions keep on coming up again and again: ‘I want to source commodity directly from smallholder, how can I do this?’ ‘Smallholders are getting a raw deal, how can they sell directly to companies and get better market prices?’ This objective is […]
Scaling Proven Mobile Maternal Health e-Vouchers in Western Kenya
Changamka Microhealth Ltd is making healthcare delivery more cost-effective and accessible in Kenya by using mobile phones and mobile money. It is piloting a program that helps low-income, expectant mothers get electronic maternal health vouchers that they can present on their mobile phones at health facilities. The vouchers qualify mothers for antenatal, maternity, and post-natal […]
Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs 2012 Impact Report
Today the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs launches our 2012 Impact Report. The annual report highlights new data on the increase in investments in small and growing businesses (SGBs) as well as other trends and challenges that the sector faces. For the first time this year we’re holding launch events not only in the United […]
Health Kiosks for Kenya Slums – Taking Community Healthcare to Scale
Access Afya is bringing a chain of “ultra-mini-clinics” to slums in Kenya. The mini-clinics are neighborhood kiosks staffed with qualified medical professionals and equipped with the latest health technologies and diagnostics. Access Afya’s pilot mini-clinic is designed to encourage patients to seek timely preventative care and early diagnosis of illness because the clinics are more […]
Building Business Platforms to Catalyze Action and Impact for Nutrition
In London last Saturday, the global community came together to catalyze action around the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit. Since UK Prime Minister Cameron pushed for a multi-stakeholder approach to tackling malnutrition at the Olympic Hunger Event he co-hosted with the Government of Brazil last year, actors from across the public and private sectors have […]
Social Impact Investing And The G8
Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID) Last week the UK Prime Minister hosted a G8 event on social impact investment at the Bloomberg Auditorium in London. Social impact investments are investments that have both a social and a financial return and in the case of international development are targeted at enterprises which benefit the poor […]