My sister in law is a writer, and while she is now a successful author of short-stories she has also done a lot of writing for a wide variety of trade and travel magazines.  She always complains that ‘everyone thinks they can write’, under-valuing the expertise that professional writers have. In fact, magazine writers need highly developed skills in how to write to a style, such as text that is bright and breezy and also conveys a lot of information. 

It is rather the same with…

My colleague, Jonathan Said, and I were travelling between Lilongwe and Blantyre last week by National Coach, to save fuel and avoid queues at the pumps here in Malawi. The pleasant drive through the dry winter (well, winter by Malawi standards) countryside gave us a chance to debate alternative strategies to assist Malawi’s private sector growth.



I’ve been involved in projects which look at real, practical problems of shipping product from A to B, quality control on products…

12 projects have been selected for small grants within the first round of IAP support. Key messages about the applications received include:

• IAP received 89 applications for small grants.
• Among the organisations applying for funding, 17 different countries of origin are represented.
• The majority of the applying organisations (39 applicants), have headquarters in Sweden; among development countries, Zambia, with 14 applications, is most frequent.
• There…

         I'm sorry if the title of this article sounds a little gloom and doom, because it’s not meant to be provocative or even create the slightest amount of spark or controversy. It’s just that I think economics is an ignored area of expertise when we deal with inclusive business. There seems to be this general idea amongst the public,…

Social business in my understanding, is a business that is designed solely for the purpose of resolving a social or environmental problem that deters development and growth. Hence like any other business, a social business must thrive for economic efficiency and must have an aim to achieve a profit but keep in mind that finances should not be taken as the only indicators of success for a social…

Village youth on Facebook, undersea cables linking Africa to the virtual globe, mobile innovation, democracy in the ether, Google in Swahili, Amharic and Zulu, predictions of a $25 internet-enabled phone, business opportunities for the giants, such as Nokia, and for the micro-operators, such as hawkers shifting from selling pirated DVDs to entertainment bundles on memory cards.  All these and more are coved in this month's Editor's Choice - "…

In my previous blog I briefly mentioned the importance of the private sector in the RSP project. I’d like to talk a little more on this topic.

So why do private sector companies sign up to CARE’s Rural Sales Program? What’s in it for them?

In short they see it as the perfect opportunity to penetrate emerging markets - a whole new cluster of consumers. This opportunity didn’t previously exist. A lot of rural households don’t live within the range of large…

The 28^th of June 2011, was the start of Social Business day; an endeavor started by none other than the Nobel laureate Professor. Md. Yunus. Coincidentally, it is also the birthrate of the professor himself, Happy Birthday Professor. The conference held talked about how with the help of social business, the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved. Among present were different members of the Grameen family, dignitaries, students, government officials and prominent…

At a corporate forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in March 2011, an official of the International Finance Corporation (IFC, World Bank Group) remarked that there was more money available to businesses in Africa than good projects to absorb them. To many of the forum participants, the statement seemed like an exaggeration. When I was tasked, therefore, by BIF a few weeks later to identify potential sources of funding for an innovative venture in Nigeria, I had a real opportunity to…

        We know inclusive businesses are beneficial for the society because they include the less fortunate sectors of the society in the business value chain. But still, this information is too generic and some amount of confusion lingers. One of the most effective ways to tattoo the…