USAID’s Investment Facilitation Activity in the DRC (USAID Invest) is a five-year program that aims at fostering private investments into the DRC by operating as an investment facilitation platform, providing support to businesses and investors. The Activity seeks to mobilize $100 million in private capital to the DRC between March 2021 and February 2026. Reach…
Since the end of its civil war, Lebanon has shown incredible resilience through recent events such as the Arab Spring and the Syrian armed conflict, which resulted in an influx of refugees and significant shifts in agricultural trading. The ongoing impact of the Beirut blast and the pandemic have only furthered the country’s extreme political…
Farmers who work the rich soil of the Okavango River Basin in the Kavango region of Namibia depend on rainfall to water their crops. In 2018 and 2019, the rain didn’t fall, and the worst drought in 90 years devastated fields, killed thousands of livestock, and left a third of Namibians without adequate food. Some…
Wayne Lifshitz is an entrepreneurial senior leader, systems-thinker, business strategist, and strategic connector with more than 20 years of cross-cutting experience in Big 5 consulting, start-up, nonprofit, federal, and social enterprise sectors. He is currently a Senior Director in Asia for the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) Project and acted…
The USAID Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities (DCEO) activity addresses the conflict’s underlying drivers by building Iraq’s local communities’ resilience. Under the Business Competitiveness and Job Creation Initiative (BCJCI) and 100 Solutions for Stability Task Orders, DCEO bolsters community members’ ability to advocate for the changes their communities need and supports private sector networks to…
Women in Haiti are often at social, political, and economic disadvantages compared to their male counterparts, as evidenced by Haiti’s ranking in the Gender Inequality Index. The gap is especially significant and consequential for rural women who engage primarily in subsistence farming with little to no access to or control over productive assets and financial…
Deforestation and the conversion of native vegetation linked to the soy supply chain are serious environmental concerns to key biomes in South America and obstacles to achieving sustainability in the agricultural sector. The Land Innovation Fund for Sustainable Livelihoods, established with an initial contribution from Cargill, is managed by Chemonics. The fund supports innovations that…
This brief describes how projects in Mali and Haiti applied of the Innovation Adoption Measurement Approach, developed by Chemonics expert Dr. Tom Fattori, to support adaptive management on resilience-focused projects. This approach takes the findings from an innovation adoption assessment and identifies specific and actionable recommendations for targeting and improving the adoption of practices that…
This brief focuses on three key lessons learned — the importance of social capital for resilience, leveraging social capital to establish community buy-in, and linking resilience activities to specific shocks. The USAID Reforestation project team applied this learning to implement a refined reforestation approach, which may be relevant to other projects incorporating components of resilience-building,…
This post originally appeared on MarketLinks. Over the past few decades, we’ve all heard variations of the same refrain: the future is digital. However, digital’s promise is hard to realize in many contexts given the technology infrastructure required for success. This goes beyond broadband internet availability and access to include cultural norms and other factors…
The projections of the financing needed for water infrastructure range from $6.7 trillion by 2030 to $22.6 trillion by 2050. These estimates do not include investments needed for water resources, irrigation, or energy. Further, the World Bank has estimated that to deliver universal access to safe water and sanitation services under the Sustainable Development Goals…
The role of USAID’s VukaNow Activity is to catalyze learning and share information and best practices to enhance collaborative efforts to combat wildlife crime in southern Africa. This work requires many in-person meetings and workshops. In 2020, VukaNow, along with partner CollaborateUp, was organizing a critical learning event in Botswana, planned for mid-March. Just a…