Potential Disruption to Traditional Financing
Blockchain could alter the landscape for small business all over the world. It may be years or decades before this happens, but things do tend to change fast in this world! Read More…
The Importance of small-scale agriculture in Africa
Article on the importance of supporting small-scale farmers by reducing barriers ” limiting their access to inputs; foster the adoption of environmentally sustainable approaches and technologies; increase access to credit and markets; facilitate farm mechanisation; revitalize agricultural extension systems; strengthen land tenure rights; ensure equity in supply contracts; and strengthen small-scale producer organisations.” Read More…
Financing is critical to power availability
Breakthrough Energy Ventures – 5-point strategy
BEV is a billion-dollar fund to finance breakthroughs in energy technology. Speaking in Paris recently Bill Gates described their strategic focus.
Bill Gates: “Energy transitions take a long time, but there’s more urgency than ever to prevent the worst impacts of climate change,” said Gates, in a statement. “We need new models of investment and new partnerships between governments and a broad network of investors, companies, and energy customers. Breakthrough Energy is designed to help facilitate those partnerships and bring more energy products from the lab to the market more quickly.”
Thoughts on Resilience
In a recent LinkedIn comment, Michael Burke, Chairman and CEO of AECOM talked about the importance of thinking about and planning for resilience in every project large or small. What does this mean for development work? We need to be thinking and talking about how to build resilience into all of our projects moving forward.
Read Mr. Burke’s opinion piece here.
Blog post on managing water systems – IRC
Through the USAID SWS Learning Partnership efforts are being made to try different approaches to operations and maintenance. Read this blog post from Ethiopia Country Director John Butterworth.