Community Health Workers Extend Reach to Prevent Malaria in Nigeria

When floods hit the central Nigerian city of Makurdi during the recent rainy season, Margaret Beetsel knew her work as a community health worker would be more difficult, but not impossible. So, she climbed into a canoe and made her rounds, delivering medicine to eligible children to help prevent severe, and often deadly, malaria. Beetsel,…

Turning Moldova’s Brain Drain into Brain Gain

Over the last two decades, young Moldovans have faced a bleak economic future, with limited job prospects and low wages. Global and regional crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and unprecedented inflation have not helped matters. A strong workforce is desperately needed to help rebuild the economy. For many young Moldovans,…

From Outer Space to Brazilian Farmland

Soil-testing technology developed on Mars is improving farming practices on Earth while helping to address climate change. In the flat, dry soy fields of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, an artificial intelligence startup called Agrorobótica is collecting soil samples, then using NASA-inspiredrobotics to analyze their composition. Agrorobótica is funded through an innovation grant managed by Chemonics International. The…

How Public-Private Partnerships are Bringing Clean Drinking Water to Tajikistan

Ms. Sonia Rajabova spent much of her life without reliable access to clean drinking water. Her household’s primary source of water was the irrigation canal near her home, and they used buckets and bottles to bring it home. But not anymore. “Now I have a water stand inside my house,” she says. “All these years we…

Illuminating Lebanon in Its Darkest Times

Water will soon flow again in Majdel Aanjar. And for that, local residents can thank an innovative new program that harnesses the power of the sun. The small farming community in northeastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley — equidistant from Beirut and Damascus, the respective capitals of Lebanon and Syria — has suffered from a severe water…

Growing the Next Crop of Agri-Tech Entrepreneurs Through Innovation and Scale

Although agriculture has been a cornerstone of the Ugandan economy for generations, many farmers in the East African republic earned barely enough in 2013 to provide schooling for their children. Having grown up in smallholder farming families themselves, agri-tech entrepreneurs William Luyinda, Esther Karwera, and Zilla Mary Arach knew these struggles all too well. “Unfortunately,…

Innovating Techniques and Technology to Improve Education in Tajikistan

In 2021, village elders in the small Tajik community of Isfisor noticed a woman who frequently traveled the unpaved road through their neighborhood to visit the local school. Curious about the nature of the woman’s visits, they asked the school’s director, Nazira Khabibova. “I explained that our school works with the USAID Read with Me project,” says Khabibova,…

Breaking Through Barriers in Ghana to Reach the Last Mile

This post was originally published by the Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project, and is cross posted with permission.  When Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) was launched in 2012, it aimed to make high-quality, voluntary family planning (FP) services, information and supplies more available, acceptable and affordable for an additional 120 million women…