Meet the Longlist: Unilever Global Development Award, Supported by Business Fights Poverty
For the fifth year in a row, Business Fights Poverty is partnering with Unilever and Business in the Community on an award that recognises businesses that demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the SDGs Business has a key role to play in helping drive progress on ending poverty and protecting the planet. More […]
Formal Finance and Informal Groups: Inside the Black Box
A successful business case for linkages must offer something useful to all involved parties. This means looking ‘inside the black box’ of different mindsets: the bank or microfinance institution (MFI) interested in mobilizing money; the fintech or platform provider interested in moving money; and last but not least, the informal groups and the people using […]
Mapping Lives with Refugees
Do you decide to try and reach Europe by any means necessary? So begins the Guardian’s online interactive, “The Refugee Challenge.” You play as a widowed mother of two who must escape the airstrikes in Syria and make your way to Europe, where you can attain asylum. While the victories and setbacks you encounter mimic choose-your-own-adventure novels, the […]
Charting a Course for Robust Private Sector Engagement
Since its inception, MCC has sought to engage the private sector as a key part of its mission of “Reducing Poverty Through Economic Growth.” Now in its 14th year, the agency has a strong foundation of experience and best practices gleaned from working with the business community to build upon. Yet how to best draw […]
Making Payment Acceptance a Driver for Financial Inclusion
Ten years ago, 85 percent of the world’s transactions were in cash and checks, and 2.5 billion people were unbanked. Since then, we’ve all been working hard as an industry to develop technology that will give the unbanked access to the world of digital payments. Mastercard has connected more than 360 million people to formal […]
Sustainability Standards Embrace GIS Technology
The exponential growth in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for sustainability is not surprising. It is a technology that becomes more powerful the more people use it, and it offers the sustainability community a straightforward and universal platform to come together and build on each other’s work. GIS is not new to sustainability […]
Are Standards an Effective Tool to Help Improve Production Practices Across Sectors?
As businesses increasingly strengthen their sustainability policies in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), many are deepening their sustainability commitments. We know from an AidEnvironment review published last year that upstream and downstream businesses benefit in many different ways from working with sustainability standards, for example, 98% of studies reviewed show improvements in sales and […]
4 Tips for Effective and Dynamic Groups
Call them networks, working groups or knowledge hubs, communities of practice have been flourishing in the international development sector for some time now. Whether you want to influence decision makers, share best practices or connect with professionals within or beyond the sector, communities can help you strengthen your organisation’s outreach and knowledge. And today, thanks […]
Women Sea Salt Producers in Indonesia Cooperate to Seize New Economic Opportunities
Traditional sea salt production has been practiced on the island of Lombok in Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara province for generations. It is labor-intensive work generally done by poor women like Mini Asmayanti. Mini earns less than $2 a day. This modest income, along with that of her husband, a fisherman, provides for them and their […]
Time to Re-energise the INGO Model Through Structural Innovation
The international NGO sector faces significant disruption to its business models in the next decade. As IARAN has noted, INGOs must think deeply about what kind of organisation they want to be in 2030 if they are to keep pace with shifts in demography, technology, climate, geopolitics and much else besides. For UK-based INGOs, such […]
Virtual Reality Training in Southern Africa
Every fan of horror movies knows that a person wielding a chainsaw can cause some serious damage. The tool is rated as one of the most dangerous available; one wrong move and its user could lose a limb. In Southern Africa, forestry students don’t have to worry about that anymore. They are now using a […]
A Nigérien Entrepreneur Finds Her Niche in Camel Milk
Last month, I travelled to Niamey, Niger’s capital, where MCC Country Team Lead for Niger Kristin Penn and our Nigérien partners are hard at work on MCC’s $437 million compact to improve access to water for agriculture and livestock and expand access to markets. Around 80 percent of Niger’s population relies on the agricultural sector for its […]
Supporting the SDGs through the Power of Data
To wrap up 2017, GSMA, the UN Foundation and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (the Global Partnership) met in New York with UN agencies and country missions to discuss the actual and potential contribution of partnerships and data to a better world. GSMA shared concrete examples of how an industry sector is using […]
5 Steps to Build Trust in Your Organisation
By Rupert Younger, Director, Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation We have been witnessing a collapse in trust in businesses, the media and governments for a number of years now. But Edelman’s recent 2017 global survey shows that trust in NGOs is also in decline. This matters. Trust underpins all NGOs’ interactions, and without it their work costs […]
The Agricultural Models We Want Tomorrow
Rana, 45-year-old Egyptian mother of three, sells her vegetables on a wooden cart at the side of a dusty and bustling road in the heart of the Sayeda Zeinab district of Cairo. She stands there from sunrise to sunset every day to earn enough money to feed her children. Despite a relatively steady flow of […]
Access to Energy Through Mobile Is Changing Lives
Over the last decade, the rapid growth of the mobile industry in developing countries has surprised observers. Access to mobile has increasingly outpaced access to basic services such as energy, water and sanitation. In fact, due to the slow expansion of the traditional energy grid, 1.2 billion people around the world still live without access […]
Meet the Winners: The Louis Malassis Scientific Prize for Agriculture and Food Security
Interviews with The Louis Malassis Scientific Prize for Agriculture and Food Security Winners Scientists hold some of the key answers to so many of today’s agricultural challenges at their fingertips. Our support for this community is a vital if we are to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Agropolis founder Louis Malassis knew this, long […]
Delivering on the Promise of Inclusive Business
Back in November 2008, on a hot, dusty day in Dar es Salaam, I vividly remember the moment I met Lillian Kessy. I was immediately struck by her confidence, dignity and determination. Only a year earlier, Lillian was in a desperate financial situation. By the time I met her, she was busy building a small […]
A Paradigm Shift
By Stephanie Manciagli, Specialist of International Replicas for the Poverty Stoplight at Fundación Paraguaya Since the onset of the new millennium, there have been tremendous evolutions in human welfare. During the last two decades, development theories and strategies taken by international actors have integrated lessons learned from previous decades, recycling the themes that worked and […]
How to Achieve Financial inclusion through Data-free Mobile Banking
Two billion people, or 45% of the developing world’s adult population, do not have a bank account, other financial institution or mobile-money service.[1] Financial services are the lifeblood of an economy, giving households the ability to save, invest, and protect themselves against risk. The promise of digital technologies can give more people access to financial […]