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 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 […]
G8 New Alliance should focus investments on the right foods for nutrition
We are in the midst of some of the biggest weeks on the global food and nutrition calendar. Last weekend the Nutrition for Growth Summit announced new funding pledges and this week food and agriculture will be major priorities in discussions leading up to the G8 Summit. Much of the attention is being focused on […]
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 […]
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 […]
Business Solutions for Smallholder Farmers in Africa
At last year’s G8 summit President Obama highlighted the need to invest in African agriculture, announcing a new initiative aimed at driving sustainable agricultural productivity. Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are the key to that initiative’s success. There are around 33 million smallholder farmers in the region, representing 80% of all farms and producing up […]
G8 Nutrition for Growth
UK Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about the role of foreign aid in reducing poverty and malnutrition. Originally given at G8 Nutrition for Growth conference on Saturday, 8 June 2013. This is the text of the speech as drafted. There will be a lot of people talking about statistics today. I want to start by […]
Building an architecture to drive Post-2015 collaboration
Achieving the post-2015 development agenda will require the use of partnership at an unprecedented scale. Here’re some key elements necessary to make that happen. Last week’s report from the High Level Panel on the post-2015 development, rightly puts cross-sectoral collaboration squarely at the heart of achieving sustainable development, and reiterates the vital role business can […]
The Hunger Alliance: Investing in Small-Scale Women Farmers
There’s already enough food in the world for everyone, but one person in eight goes hungry every night, and 2.3 million children die needlessly each year from malnutrition. What can be done about it? A report published by the Hunger Alliance suggests investing more in small-scale women farmers would be a good start. Three quarters […]
A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development
Last July, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, brought together a High-Level Panel to advise on the development framework that should replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. The group delivered its much-anticipated report at the end of last week, “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development”. One of […]
Empowering Women through Business
How does any institution, private or public, achieve scale when targeting an emerging area of business interest such as supporting women entrepreneurs? This was the key question during the conversation I participated in, hosted by Coca-Cola and Business Fights Poverty, on the margins of the Africa World Economic Forum in Cape Town last month. The […]
Trending in Social Innovation: Questions for the Founder and Curator of the Social Innovation Summit
From a presentation of a prototype for the world’s first cardboard bicycle to a conversation with “Mr. Toilet,” this year’s Social Innovation Summit, held May 29 and 30 in New York City, spanned the gamut of inventiveness and cross-sectoral approaches to systemic societal challenges. For four years now, the summit (held annually in New York […]
Radically redefining the role of business in a post 2015 world – the need for symbiotic partnerships for development
Despite much talk about the importance of business in the post 2015 development framework, astonishingly little agreement seems to have been reached on the question of how, in practice, the private sector should be involved in the post 2015 development agenda. And unfortunately, the report of the High Level Panel, which came out last week, […]
Sustainable Food Production – A 21st Century Revolution
I grew up on a small farm, living on less than a dollar a day per person. I was lucky—we had a big garden, an orchard, raised some of our own meat, and hunted and fished for most of the rest. Years later, I worked with refugees and famine victims, seeing firsthand the impacts of […]
An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Food Production
TechnoServe As Eshetu Abote, a member of the Shegole coffee farming cooperative in western Ethiopia, crouches near his maize (corn) crop, the difference is apparent. The shorter plants – cultivated using traditional methods – barely reach his shoulder. The taller plants have benefited from training given during monthly sessions supported by TechnoServe’s team, which is […]
Unleashing Africa’s Lions
In Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat, he uses a proverb to describe today’s globalized economy: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle […]
Yasmina Zaidman: Exploring Opportunities for Collaboration Between Social Enterprises and Global Corporations
On May 14-16, Acumen held its first summit of social enterprises and global corporations to explore opportunities for collaboration aimed at expanding access to critical goods and services for poor communities in East and West Africa. The event was the formal kick-off of the Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative, a partnership between Acumen and Dow launched […]