"This report depicts the landscape of development organizations that fund and support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries: 1) multilateral development banks, 2) bilateral government donor agencies, and 3) development finance institutions (DFIs). The report is a new contribution to both the development community, as well as the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Advocacy and policy work is a strategic priority for ANDE, and the report's findings will enable the Network to understand the international development community and to be more strategic in its approach as it seeks to influence and shape the international development SME agenda."

"Commercial agriculture in Mozambique remains underdeveloped and successful cases of smallholder inclusive business models are rare. In addition to “doing business” constraints at a macro level, smallholder inclusive business models – whether in “outgrower” schemes or other arrangements – pose additional challenges to competitiveness. Low-quality product, insufficient and inconsistent supply, mutual issues of mistrust and a post-war culture of hand-outs can make it more profitable for some companies to import primary produce or work with large-scale farmers. CB Farm Fresh is a smallholder-inclusive vegetable processor and distributor serving the extractives industry in Tete. This case study aims to understand how smallholder-inclusive business models can be successfully implemented by assessing CB Farm Fresh’s end-to-end model."

"A professor at Brazil’s prestigious Federal University of Viçosa saw a need on campus for an incubator to support technologically-oriented businesses, including agribusinesses. This resulted in the CENTEV Technology Incubator, which is partially funded by the university but which also receives state and private grants. Its function is to nurture entrepreneurs to develop viable technology based businesses by providing them with management assistance and augmenting their technical capabilities with expert academic advice. The incubator’s 24 graduates are still in business, with average revenues of $2.5 million a year."

"This report explores a refreshed perspective on the long term viability of impact investing and presents the "Impact Investing Roadmap" - a framework that investors can use to clarify their vision for impact investing, define stages of impact investing activities and identify tactical steps to develop an investment strategy. Those tactical steps include designing an impact investing model, managing issues of organizational change and if desired, engaging with the robust and supportive impact investing ecosystem."

"This report provides an analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on Nigeria by first providing an overview of the global situation and Nigerian context, including the response to-date, then by estimating and describing the potential economic impact of COVID-19 on the broader economy and by sector, with a focus on MSMEs. Finally, the report identifies four categories of actions to support the economic recovery: the usual suspects, the unusual suspects, short-term actions, and medium-term actions."

"This guide is intended as an entry point for grantmaking and investing for social impact, with practical direction on how to apply these principles to your own portfolio. This guide is intended to be used by individual donors who seek to maximize social and financial impact across their portfolios, although this coordinated approach can also be used by organizations seeking to do the same."

"Recognizing the critical importance of measurement and learning to the effectiveness and impact of both the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) and the sector, CCA follows a clearly defined Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Framework. The Framework includes key elements such as CCA's Theory of Change, a set of standard indicators that CCA will use across its work and guidelines on conducting evaluations."

"The authors conduct a randomized experiment among women in urban Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business program. They work with two representative groups of women: a random sample of women operating subsistence enterprises and a random sample of women who are out of the labor force but interested in starting a business. They track the impacts of two treatments -- training only and training plus a cash grant -- over two years with four follow-up surveys and find that the short and medium-term impacts differ."

"This issue brief, part of a series published by ANDE in 2019, is designed to create a common knowledge base from which the Small and Growing Business (SGB) sector can work in the hopes of advancing towards selected development goals. SGBs will have to confront climate and environmental changes such as extreme weather and rapidly depleting natural resources as they affect their customers, operations, and supply chains. In light of these changes, this issue brief lays out the major environmental action topics and strategies for the SGB sector."

"The world's poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses. This shift, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings. Inculcating basic entrepreneurship, where severely disadvantaged women take on occupations which were the preserve of non-poor women, is shown to be a powerful means of transforming the economic lives of the poor."