Is Your Company Ready to Engage with the SDGs through Inclusive Business?
SDG engagement can take the form of a tested and decade-old concept: inclusive business. A new report helps companies assess how ready they are to incorporate it. These are unsettling times. The promise of globalisation is being increasingly eclipsed by political uncertainty and a rising tide of nationalism and protectionism. In listening to workers displaced […]
Why Women Workers and Managers Prefer Electronic Wage Payments in Bangladesh
Payday can be an ordeal for women garment workers in Bangladesh. Often, they must wait in long lines, carry wads of cash through crowded streets, or encounter a mother-in-law demanding money. Garment factories account for a huge slice of Bangladesh’s economy and employ more than three million women. Most are paid in cash. That’s bad […]
One for All, and All for One: Industry-Level Collaboration is Needed to Eradicate Forced Labour
According to the ILO, nearly 21 million people are subjected to forced labour around the world (an alternative estimate from the Walk Free Foundation, which is working with the ILO to release updated figures this year, puts the number more than twice as high). This activity generates $150 billion in illegal profits every year. 71% […]
Five Ways East Africa is Leading the World on Financial Inclusion Through Savings Groups
By Fiona Jarden, Financial Inclusion Advocacy and Policy Adviser, CARE International UK Demand for financial services from low-income groups is at an all-time high. Some of that demand is by informal savings and loans groups – including CARE’s 5 million Village Savings and Loan Association members – who want access to quality group bank accounts […]
How Business Can Help Address Youth Employability
Barclays is a transatlantic bank with a history of supporting young people to gain skills for employability. Between 2012 and 2015, we delivered skills training to over 5.7 million disadvantaged young people and in 2016 we helped a further 1.7m people gain employability skills. During this time, we have increasingly focused on measuring and understanding […]
How Can Companies Harness the SDGs to Strengthen Smallholder Supply Chains?
Contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represents a significant value creating opportunity for business. According to the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, achieving the SDGs will create up to US$12 trillion of market opportunities[1] for companies across the four economic systems studied in its landmark report Better Business, Better World (food and agriculture, cities, […]
Improving Services in Low Income Markets
For businesses selling products and services at the base of the pyramid, understanding low-income consumers and the choices they make is critical to meeting customer needs, boosting sales, and delivering real value. Inclusive business Dr. Consulta run a network of medical centres that provide primary and secondary care in São Paulo, Brazil. With over 85,000 […]
Black Swans and the Future of Energy
Energy experts now confidently predict that by 2040, solar and wind will drive no less than 60% of global power; natural gas will replace the lion’s share of the burning of coal, and the market for electric cars will soar. Nassim Taleb, on the other hand, questions the ability of experts to predict just about […]
Bridging Gaps: Cross-sector Collaboration is the Future of Sustainable Business
The world faces growing problems—natural resource scarcity and climate change, along with anti-trade and migration movements—that require more nimble policies, institutions and investments for sustainable development. Yet, current approaches are hobbled because they operate in silos across sectors. When stakeholders and policymakers operate in silos, maximizing one interest at the expense of everyone else’s, the […]
REGISTER NOW: Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2017, 10/11 July
Incentivizing Sustainable Fashion: Lessons from Social Entrepreneurs
An estimated 75 million people are now employed by the apparel industry. It’s a number that has almost quadrupled in the last 15 years. With this exponential growth, the not-so-hidden costs of fashion too have increased. But while critics say that changing company behavior simply isn’t profitable, social innovators are proving that there are imaginative […]
Corporate Leaders, Don’t Miss the Social Impact Wave!
For a big company, innovating is anticipating. It involves being able to spot weak signals, new ideas and models that will disrupt tomorrow’s markets. In only 10 years, changes in digital technology have deeply disrupted the rules of economic competition. In a faster and more interconnected world, companies that have been able to anticipate the […]
Inclusive Distribution: The Secret to Securing a Route-to-Market
Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies are well aware that emerging and developing markets represent their greatest growth opportunity. 90 percent of Unilever’s global growth and Procter & Gamble’s only growth came from emerging markets during 2008-2014. Yet, with the majority of population growth over the next 35 years expected to be in today’s developing countries, […]
Blockchain Will Bring Empowerment And Transparency To Development
The open source, decentralised database blockchain allows donors, aid agencies, NGOs and beneficiaries to operate transparent, agile and open networks. Software is eating the world. And it is also gaining more and more importance and changing processes in development. Access to smartphones is increasing fast. And as we are seeing the first fruitful outcomes stemming […]
Solving Bangladesh’s Skills Shortage Through Apprenticeships
BRAC Case study on Youth Employability Bangladesh has undergone an enormous transformation over the past forty years and has long been seen as an example of how aid can support progressive, pro-poor and country driven development. But a major issue has been holding the country back; young people and businesses in Bangladesh are facing a […]
The World Can't Wait for Sewers
For many people living in low-income urban areas, a flush toilet or sewer connection is little more than a pipe dream. Often the infrastructure doesn’t exist or can’t be constructed in such densely populated or topographically challenging areas, or service fees are simply too high. The world needs a viable, high-quality alternative to piped sanitation […]
The World Can’t Wait for Sewers
For many people living in low-income urban areas, a flush toilet or sewer connection is little more than a pipe dream. Often the infrastructure doesn’t exist or can’t be constructed in such densely populated or topographically challenging areas, or service fees are simply too high. The world needs a viable, high-quality alternative to piped sanitation […]
USAID Partners to Invest in Africa’s Entrepreneurs
This week’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which brings thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and policymakers to Johannesburg, South Africa, is an opportunity to build on the momentum of the Sankalp Africa Forum and reaffirm the development community’s commitment to invest in Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Sustainable entrepreneurship is a critical component of inclusive development. Entrepreneurs create jobs, […]
Girls’ Economic Empowerment – Why Context Matters for Financial Education
Last year I wrote about why it makes sense for corporates to invest in girls’ education and introduced Credit Suisse’s Financial Education for Girls program that aims to improve the financial knowledge and life skills of approximately 100,000 girls. At the time, the program had been implemented for only 18 months. This year we are […]
Co-Creating Partnerships to Achieve the Global Goals
With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) having significantly raised the bar regarding ambition and universality, there is agreement that we have to go well beyond business as usual. Achieving breakthrough progress in these rapidly-changing times requires a new mind-set and different behavior from all of us. “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not […]