Eight Steps to the Four A’s of Food Security
The potential of African agriculture is undoubtedly bright, but it will take more than just encouraging investment from large scale agri-players – of which Olam is one – into the continent. Food security depends on the four As – the essential combination of availability (is there enough), accessibility (in the right place), affordability (for the […]
Three Ways Businesses Can Boost Sustainable Development
What does a procurement manager in Managua have to do with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Or a Kenyan farmer’s mobile-phone plan with the World Economic Forum’s development discussions? When it comes to long-term development solutions – well, everything. Given the increasing involvement of the private sector in developing countries, ordinary aspects of doing business […]
How We Can Help Smallholders Feed the World
The world’s population is expected to number more than 9 billion people by 2050, and to feed them agriculture will have to grow by 60%. It’s an expansion that can only be fuelled by investment – to the tune of $83 billion. Growth generated by agriculture is up to four times more effective at reducing […]
Strengthening Public Extension Service Delivery to Farmers in Bangladesh
Mahmud Zaman explains how the LAN project aims to increase farm productivity and efficiency. A recent case study published by Katalyst, Improving Public Agricultural Extension Services in Bangladesh Using the M4P Approach, has attracted interest from a wide range of readers and the BEAM Exchange has organised a webinar to discuss the topics and share […]
Living Wage Comes of Age?
January in the UK is a time of New Year’s resolutions, traditionally with commitments to new goals, or renewed attempts to meet some old ones. The trick is to stick with your plans and implement them – not run out of steam half way through February. I’m curious to see if this is the year […]
Why Companies Fail to Pay a Living Wage
With companies seeking to maximise profits to meet investors’ expectations, workers in the supply chain lose out and remain trapped in poverty. Erinch Sahan looks at why workers continue to earn poverty wages around the world and argues that companies need to be given the freedom to forgo profits for the greater good of shared […]
Lifting the Game in Sustainable Reporting
With the start of a new year, it is usually a time for people to reflect on the year that has passed, draw lessons from it so that they can improve themselves in the coming year. For sustainability practitioners, and advocacy evangelisers like myself, it is also an opportunity for us to review the year […]
Enhancing Vital Goods and Services Provided by Nature
25 years ago you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone in a company who thought that nature had anything to do with their business. We thought that nature would pollinate, control crop pests and disease and would continue to provide plentiful water and rich soil – all free of charge. But with rapid industrialisation […]
The Connected Farmer Alliance
You can’t talk about reducing poverty in this world without talking about agriculture. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with the vast majority dependent on agriculture for all or part of their incomes. Growth in the agricultural sector, therefore, has been shown to be at least twice as effective at reducing […]
Transcending Boundaries for Global Food Security
In just 25 years, Olam International has gone from a single-country, single-commodity company to a fully integrated global agribusiness firm operating in 65 countries. This growth is a true reflection of the meanings of the word ‘olam’, which is alternatively translated from old Hebrew to mean ‘transcending boundaries’, ‘the world’ and ‘timeless’. These definitions also […]
A Unique Way of Investing in Small Family Businesses
Interview with Composer Christopher Gunning, Lendwithcare Supporter It’s no secret that Christmas, traditionally associated with goodwill and generosity, has over the years become a festival of gluttony and excess. Waste, too, is slowly creeping up: this year an estimated £2.4billion will be spent on unwanted gifts in Britain alone. Charity gifts are on the rise […]
Giving The Gift Of Opportunity This Christmas
When crowdfunding is combined with microfinance, amazing things can happen. Jo Broughton of Lendwithcare, the peer-to-peer microfinancing platform devised by aid and development charity CARE International, says that in the fight against poverty this is a winning combination. Lendwithcare began in 2010, offering individuals in the UK the chance to club together to finance the […]
Fighting Climate Change With Indigenous Livelihoods
edia Manager, Ashoka Changemakers In Indonesia, where forests are being destroyed at the highest rates in the world, an untapped solution exists for balancing conservation with economic expansion. Indonesia is the world’s fastest deforester—a dubious distinction that once belonged to Brazil. A recent reportrevealed that more than 2 million acres of primary forest are cleared […]
How Inclusive Business is Transforming Tourism
In 2012, 1 billion tourists travelled across borders, compared to 25 million in 1950. Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, and it’s growing most quickly in emerging and developing countries. Currently, UNWTO calculates that tourism is responsible for 9% of global GDP, for over 1 in 11 jobs and for USD 1.3 […]
A New Programme to Bring out Innovation and Change
Do you remember some of your most productive learning moments as an adult? They likely involved solving problems that were relevant to your life or working environment, and in an informal atmosphere. Learning moments in the inclusive business field are no exception. I vividly remember some “accelerated” learning experiences like arriving in Rwanda with what […]
How will you Step Forward in 2015?
Friday 5 December marks International Volunteer Day and to coincide with this, VSO is launching a new global campaign inviting people to pledge to #StepForward and raise the profile of volunteering for development in 2015. This campaign builds on recent research conducted by VSO and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) demonstrating that ‘human-capital’ is […]
Economically Empowering Women at Scale in South Africa
Ngoetsana Sehlabo is known by her community in Orange Farm, South Africa as Mampho. For many years she was a hawker, on the streets selling a local dish called ‘atcha’. In 2012, she branched out and set up her own store – Mampho’s Fast Food – to sell food, drinks and snacks. After a year, […]
IFC’s New Report on Inclusive Business
About 4.5 billion people in developing countries are low-income, living on $81 a day or less. They are the so-called base of the economic pyramid and constitute a $5 trillion consumer market. However, the success of local businesses has often been lost in the discussion of ‘BOP business’ to date. While case studies abound on […]
Working Toward Sustainability in the Sugar Sector
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Bonsucro, originally known as the Better Sugarcane Initiative, is taking place in Manila this week. I remember the first AGM in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2008. It was a small group then, about 25 people. I participated in the review of the first draft Production Standard, visited the São […]
Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Rashid is a farmer I met in the Marangu region around Kilimanjaro, like his father and grandfather as well as the thousands of other farmers in the region he farms coffee, bananas and a variety of other vegetables. With declining crop prices, the income he earns from these crops is negligible and most of his […]