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Welcome to the Publications Library! Here you will find a searchable index of reports, toolkits, research papers, and other resources relevant to the Small and Growing Business Sector. Sort by clicking on the relevant tags, or by typing in key words in the box below.
Top tags: sector publication impact investing Entrepreneurship ANDE publication Access to Finance Global 2018 Social Entrepreneurship women Development accelerators Economic Growth SGB SME Africa impact evaluation 2016 GALI india Agriculture ecosystem latin america finance social enterprise 2017 environment private sector development Base of the Pyramid BoP poverty
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Current levels of investment in agricultural value chains are insufficient to achieve key development goals including ending poverty and hunger, boosting shared prosperity through more and better jobs, and better stewarding the world’s natural resources by 2030. Crowding-in private investment to help achieve these goals and optimizing the use of scarce public resources will be needed, as will the continued promotion of good governance and environmental and social sustainability. Increasing private sector investment and associated financing will require identifying and understanding market failures currently leading to the sub-optimal private provision of goods and services needed to achieve key development goals. Where the private sector is already investing in agricultural value chains, promoting responsible investment can help increase development impacts. Crowding-in more private investment requires increasing the space for private sector activity, improving the policy and regulatory environment, and considering options for using public financing to improve private incentives and to reduce transaction costs and risks, including blended finance solutions. While these actions can help induce more private investment, there is still a critical need for public resources to finance essential public goods and services such as human capital, agricultural research, and complementary public infrastructure
The South African Business Development Services Provider (BDSP) space is active and growing. In an effort to deepen understanding of the incubator and accelerator landscape in South Africa, ANDE hosted a series of breakfast roundtables in Johannesburg and Cape Town in 2017 and 2018. Discussions focused on gathering qualitative information regarding key activities and services, programme structure and funding sources, as well as challenges and opportunities faced by BDSPs. This document presents an overview of the key findings from the roundtables and provides recommendations for further research.
The 
The third major report from GALI examines the ability of accelerators to drive funds into participating ventures and explores which programmatic choices correspond with superior outcomes. The report shows that in a sample of 52 accelerators, the average flow of incremental funds into participating ventures is significantly greater than the average that flows into rejected ventures. In the majority (but not all) of these programs, this difference exceeds the reported cost of running the program. These superior funding outcomes are accomplished in different ways; many programs are most effective at stimulating revenue growth, while others are best at increasing the supply of outside equity investment. Given these differences in program efficacy and different paths to funding success, we then examine how specific program choices correspond with the ability to drive funds into participating ventures.
Relations between Savings Groups (SGs) and Financial Service Providers (FSPs) have received both a great deal of attention and considerable funding. In recent years, governments, donors, civil society organizations, and businesses have recognized the critical role that access to financial services can play in the fight against poverty. Despite the high-level of attention financial inclusion has commanded, the barriers to progress are numerous. Most impoverished households have neither the assets nor the skills necessary to interact with formal institutions. This report focuses on addressing these challenges and presenting opportunities for FSPs in working with SGs.
Nexus with collaborations from GERES a
This report presents lessons learned from various models that public and private sector programs use
While admittedly often overshadowed by hype, Artificial Intelligence (AI) today offers real opportunities for financial sector players to access new and augmented business abilities. Wielded well, AI can unlock data to reveal insights about customers, operations and businesses to inform key decisions. Sensors in smartphones also open up a whole new world of data as captured through images, text, sound and location, which AI can translate into information in real-time and with high fidelity. These kinds of advancements in the field are especially exciting for financial sector players in Africa, with real-use applications in the informal retail sector, and for businesses that rely on last-mile distribution networks, such as pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) providers,1 to reach their customers. Grounded in creating a practical and compelling case for financial services providers (FSPs) in Africa, we present an overview of AI and its benefits to businesses -- lowering costs, increasing revenue and competing in a changing market -- that could ultimately enable a more customer-centric financial ecosystem.
This study looks at an emerging trend in which wealthy families, individuals, and corporations in Asia set up foundations to institutionalise their giving. This giving is motivated by a myriad of factors beyond prestige and status, including the desire to give back to society, religion, family and personal values, the desire to drive change, personal experience, and/or affiliations.
The study reviews the current state of impact investments in Singapore and Hong Kong, particularly those that have engaged with foundations. It further looks at the trends and challenges of the impact investment sector before presenting a list of recommendations. 