What’s So Special about the United Nations Approach to Business and Human Rights?
The United Nations has pondered and contemplated the subject of business and human rights for decades with rather little success. Until 2005 that is, when the Human Rights Council requested the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Representative to “identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability with regard to human rights.” This task fell […]
The Latest Tool for Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania
Mama Muze, a widow in Dar es Salaam, has always had an interest in producing her own food products. After retiring as a banker, she set up her own food processing business, making chilli sauce and packaging it in jars with her own personalised labels. The primary challenge she faces is getting more customers. She […]
The Bigger Picture of Youth Economic Opportunity
Youth unemployment has taken center stage in global economic policy – and with good reason. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has put jobless youth at a minimum of 75 million worldwide, with young people unemployed at twice or even thrice the global adult unemployment rate. Yet, while job creation is indeed critical, generating widespread economic […]
What Your BOP Strategy is Missing – A Gender Lens
Debate on the possibilities at the base of the pyramid (BOP) is ubiquitous; nonetheless, too often regulated to a post-script is that frequently when we refer to the BOP what we actually mean is women at the BOP. It’s time to stop discussing the BOP as a single, homogenous entity and start looking more specifically […]
VELECO – the World’s First Fair Trade and Eco‐Friendly Cyclewear Company
VELECO the world’s first Fair Trade and eco‐friendly cyclewear company, based in Brighton, UK have launched an exciting new Kickstarter project to raise £20,000 in just 30 days (up till 4 July). We join a growing trend of eco start‐ups and entrepreneurs who are using crowd funding to reach new customers and generate sales. Kickstarter […]
Understanding What Makes Impact Accelerators … Accelerate
Last year, a widely-publicized report from Monitor-Deloitte and Acumen highlighted the “Pioneer Gap” in impact investing — explaining how, despite the tremendous attention and capital dedicated to impact investing (as the GIIN estimates, $17 billion in 2012 and 2013), “pioneering” early-stage firms face a serious dearth of critical resources, support, and financing. In the past […]
The Private Sector and Fragile States
The development conundrum facing the international community in the 21st century is the increasing number and persistence of fragile and conflict affected states. There are almost 50 fragile and conflict affected states in the world today. They are characterized by persistent conflict, poor governance, weak institutions, widespread corruption, lack of legitimacy, the inability to provide […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Post 2015 – 21st Century Leadership in Action?
There’s been plenty of discussion and debate in the past week or so as people have chewed over the report from Ban Ki-moon’s High Level Panel and its recommendations on the shape of the UN’s Post 2015 Development Framework. But what does this week’s news tell us about a longer term trend? About how the […]
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 […]
Launching Branson's B TeamLaunching Branson's B Team
Today sees the launch of the B Team – a collective of some of the world’s leading figures in business, including Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz. The B Team believes that global business is at a crossroads – with the need for a new way of doing business – motivated by people, planet and […]