$3B for Women’s Small Businesses

The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), a global campaign with multilateral development banks and bilateral donors to mobilize financing for women’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, raised USD 5.3M in 2024, exceeding by a factor of five its goal for the year, and in the process reaching 400,000 women’s MSMEs worldwide. Also in 2024, the…(Read more)

Big Renewables Potential in Vietnam Needs Investment: New Report

A new report on renewable energy in Vietnam by researchers at Imperial College London and Singapore Management University found that “Given Vietnam’s strong resource potential, domestic and international investors have shown strong interest in various renewable energy projects, including solar, wind, and hydropower.” The Vietnamese government has instituted supportive policies to grow renewables, including feed-in…(Read more)

The Dismantling of USAID: Five Things to Watch For

The new US administration sent shockwaves through the Global South by abruptly and brutally dismantling the world’s largest aid donor, USAID, firing 95% of its staff, and leaving partners and life-saving projects scrambling to exit while trying to protect the interests of their stakeholders, especially poor women and children. University of Ottawa professor Lauchlan Munro…(Read more)

A University-Based Non-Profit that Builds Affordable Rental Housing at Scale

Through successive replications of its mixed-income, mixed-use residential tower model, the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation has become Winnipeg’s leading social real estate developer. Featuring green construction and generous common spaces, 40% to 51% of each tower’s units are affordable while the rest are rented at market or premium rates.  With the completion of…(Read more)

Labour-Absorbing Services: Four Strategies

Economists Dani Rodrik and Rohan Sandhu recently published their latest paper on strategies for increasing the labour-absorbing capacities of the services sector in developing economies, where large numbers of young people are entering the workforce every year. As their abstract says: “Manufacturing generates very little employment in the developing world. Urban jobs are predominantly informal,…(Read more)

Special Issue of the African Evaluation Journal Honours Dr. Sulley Gariba

The African Evaluation Journal has published a special issue in honour of one of the continent’s prime leaders in the field, the late Sulley Gariba, Ghanaian diplomat, policy advisor, and evaluation strategist and practitioner.  Dr, Gariba constructed new pathways for African-developed and -owned evaluation by governments and civil society, and promoted youth engagement in the…(Read more)

Just Transition Finance: Pathways for Banking and Insurance 

At COP 28 in Dubai, the Finance Initiative of the United Nations Environment Program and the International Labour Organization released a new report entitled Just Transition Finance: Pathways for Banking and Finance. Among other things, this guide for financial institutions to: “Tailor products to support place-based just transition priorities and invigorate local economies; promote investments…(Read more)