Garron Hansen brings 20 years of international experience, including 15 years implementing both donor and U.S. Government-funded programs in Africa and Haiti. In his previous role as the senior global practice lead for the agriculture & food security practice, Garron has forged strategic partnerships and expanded Chemonics’ portfolio of projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America,…
Getting the global economy on track to reap a demographic dividend, create prosperity, protect the planet, and eliminate extreme poverty will be difficult unless governments, international donors, businesses, and practitioners work together to harness the economic aspirations of youth. A recent study by the International Labour Organization shows that 13.6 percent of youth, or more…
Asdrubal Negrete Lebette is currently the chief of party of the Colombia Rural Finance Initiative, where he works with banks, anchor firms, and producers to design and pilot innovative value chain finance mechanisms to help smallholders, small and medium enterprises to access credit and other financial services. Asdrubal has over 25 years of experience in…
Currently the director of the Small Business Liaison Office, Heather is an international development practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in agricultural value chains, financial services, small business development, and rural development. In addition, Heather has worked on contracts and grants management with an emphasis on designing grant programs to avoid market distortions.…
What are the barriers to usage of digital financial services? What are the most effective ways to drive uptake? Modern financial solutions, spurred by internet and mobile access, present an important opportunity to make transactions more efficient. These digital innovations can save time and transportation costs for bank and client alike while building credit history…
Back in 2015 while designing our approach for USAID’s Colombia Rural Finance Initiative (RFI), a Colombian colleague and I visited a sugar smallholder who had settled in the Meta department, fleeing the civil war. On his adobe walls hung a photograph of the farmer smiling proudly next to Colombia’s President Santos, who had visited their…
This post originally appeared on Agrilinks. Farming is a risky livelihood throughout the world. But for smallholder farmers in particular, productivity and food security are defined by risk. “Good years” are defined by adequate rains, and “bad years” by drought. In Uganda, where 70 percent of the population is employed in the agricultural sector, the…
Achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will not be easy — or cheap. It is estimated that an extra $2.5 trillion in funding will be needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Soon after the goals were finalized in 2015, it became clear that traditional philanthropy and official development assistance at its current levels would…
Improving the effectiveness of a program, policy, product, or organization requires assessing strengths and weaknesses — also known as evaluation. From November 6 to 11, evaluators, scholars, and students from around the world convene in Washington, D.C., for the American Evaluation Association’s annual conference to explore diverse evaluation practices and learn from their successes. The…
Catherine Kannam is Chemonics’ chief operating officer. Prior to this role, she was the senior vice president (SVP) for Chemonics’ Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan region as well as the SVP for Chemonics’ Gender, Equality, and Social Inclusion and Peace, Stability and Transition technical practices. She also oversaw our unit focused on Office of Transitions…
To feed the world’s 7.5 billion people and help smallholder farmers earn a decent living, development programs often focus on teaching farmers better production techniques. From promoting irrigation to encouraging proper pesticide use, helping farmers to produce a larger harvest is a tried and true method to increase food security and incomes. Yet farmers do…