Are you someone who believes that solar power can solve the problem of getting cheap, clean energy to people living off the grid in developing countries? Do you believe that a solar lighting enterprise has great ‘inclusive business’ potential but are unsure about how to get started? If so, our latest Spotlight publication on…

2013 promises to be an exciting year for the Business Innovation Facility (BIF), as we move into our final year.    At least final year for BIF 1.  A second version of BIF  is already on the drawing board.

As our direct support to inclusive business ventures in Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, India and Bangladesh wraps up, we will focus more on assessing and sharing results.

BIF has a mandate to share lessons about inclusive business:  about what works and what doesn’t at the level of…

Just how big is the gap between what entrepreneurs say they will achieve, and what happens in practice?  And in the absence of a crystal ball, what tools and criteria do we use to assess the likely trajectory?

These questions are addressed in  two analyses recently published by the Business Innovation Facility, in its Portfolio Review at the end of…

In Nigeria, emphasis has traditionally been placed on the oil and gas sector of the economy in terms of income…

This was the central question addressed during a recent BIF workshop held on 1^st March in Blantyre, Malawi.  The workshop, targeted at local agribusinesses, was delivered by members of PwC UK’s Sustainability and Climate Change team.

The event was well attended with representatives from Exagris, Universal Industries, GTC, Illovo, Eastern Produce, Nali, and Malawi Mangoes .Non business representatives included NASFAM, Concern Universal, VSO, EU Global Climate Change…

As part of the BIF team in India, Intellecap is currently providing consultancy support to a new BIF project working with Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) to review the operating model of its Gramin Suvidha Kendra (GSK) inclusive business model and develop a…

The Business Innovation Facility is piloting a new approach to supporting inclusive business. A ‘pilot’ is only useful if it generates lessons.  So, after one and a half years of operation in five countries, we are starting to share some preliminary lessons about this approach.

Lessons about how companies implement inclusive business are elsewhere on the Hub.  These lessons are about how business and development programmes can facilitate inclusive business by working…

The Business Innovation Facility (BIF) in collaboration with The Convention on Business Integrity (CBi) organized an Executive Roundtable on…

It has to be said that when Karen Smith, BIF Malawi country manager, and I visited the 126Ha site that Malawi Mangoes (MM) have secured for their banana plantation in early December last year, there was very little to see! However, it didn’t take much imagination to understand the potential for this big thinking business start up.  …

We seek your views and feedback to help us improve the Practitioner Hub.  The Hub has grown and evolved a a great deal in the past year, but there is alot further to go.  So every member is receiving an email this week from Keystone Accountability, seeking your views.

We have commissioned Keystone to conduct this survey because they are an indepdendent organisation skilled in analysing networks and how they cater to members's needs.  They will also help us benchmark our own results…

At the BIF event in Lagos last week, Professor Ayoola of the Farm & Infrastructure Foundation made a very funny, yet equally astute, critique of some forms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  I can’t relate this as amusingly as the Professor, nor can I retain some of the Nigerian specific content that tickled his audience, yet it went something…

Published yesterday in the Guardian as part of the 2011 International Development Journalism Competition, 'The "Avon" ladies of Bangladesh" looks at the Rural Sales…

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) today announced the scale-up of the Business Innovation Facility with an additional £2.5 million in funding, bringing the total budget of the project to £5.5 million.  The news came at a breakfast event hosted by the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), where Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell pledged greater DFID support for the private sector in the context of the UK’s development…

With roughly 1.5 years left in the pilot, the BIF team met in Dhaka last week to review progress and agree on implementation strategies for the coming years. After an initial meeting in London last year, many of the country team members based in our five pilot countries, UK based team members, alliance partners and DFID met…

Multi-commodity exchange of India’s Gramin Suvidha Kendra Initiative

Thursday, 29 September, 2011 

9:00 am NY/2:00 pm London/3:00 pm Johannesburg/6:30 pm New Dehli

Webinar will last approximately one hour.

A snapshot of the Facility’s project portfolio one year after start-up has given us the first real sense of the impacts that could be delivered - albeit a very preliminary picture.

BIF support to inclusive business projects is expected to help companies deliver both commercial and developmental returns.   More business, more…

As the Business Innovation Facility approached the end of its first year of operation, we reviewed our project portfolio so far to identify patterns and trends.



Projects supported with cost-sharing support:

So far, 18 projects have been approved by our independent Selection Committee to receive advisory support and facilitation on a cost-sharing basis. Seven projects from the earliest rounds have completed baselines and started implementation.…

The Business Innovation Faciliy team is are currently recruiting for a London-based team member to join the Knowledge Exchange team in the following areas of work:

• Be responsible for regularly updating this Practitioner Hub, e.g. uploading new resources, generating and sending out regular updates to Hub members, generating blogs and assisting the wider team with making contributions…

Five summaries of inclusive business projects supported by BIF have just been loaded, here. They add to the first to appear, Afri-Nut, building a peanut processing business in Malawi. Each introduces the inclusive business model and how the Facility will support development.

• Project 2: mKrishi…