The USAID Pakistan FIRMS Project, implemented by Chemonics, strove to enhance the competitiveness of the small and medium-sized firms that represent 90 percent all enterprises, employ an estimated 80 percent of the non-agricultural labor force, and account for approximately 40 percent of GDP. FIRMS provided enterprise-level assistance, worked to improve the business enabling environment, and…
Tourism accounts for nearly 10 percent of the global GDP, and more than one out of every 10 jobs falls into the tourism and travel sector. Given these numbers, it’s no surprise that sustainable tourism is seen as a key contributor to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 — prompting the United Nations (U.N.) to recognize…
By 2030, global food producers will need to feed an estimated 8.3 billion people, reflecting an increase of about 1 billion from the world’s population in 2015. Nearly one-third of the world’s current population, or approximately 2.5 billion people, depend on agriculture for their livelihood. However, increasingly frequent severe weather events caused by climate change…
The livelihoods of rural households in Tajikistan are highly dependent on agricultural production, yet farmers are not able to produce enough food to meet their own needs. It is sadly ironic that in an area dominated by farming, malnutrition among children is common and also causes many health problems for women of reproductive age. Farmers…
It’s no secret that agriculture is an important sector in the field of international development. The presence of farming, agricultural technologies, and agriculture policy is a certainty in nearly every country around the globe. Within this sector there are some 500 million smallholder farms worldwide; more than 2 billion people depend on them for their…
Modern secured transaction laws increase the availability of credit and reduce its cost, by ensuring that lenders can collect debt and enforce their rights in movable property collateral through a timely and inexpensive process. From a global perspective, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is significantly behind in pursuing and operationalizing reforms to…
The landmark 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) Paris Agreement recognized the need for a multi-pronged approach to reach the ambitious development goals set by 195 countries, 34 of which are in Asia. With one-third of the world’s total population, Asia is increasingly vulnerable to climate change due to its low-lying, heavily populated coastlines and dependency…
This blog post was originally published by Digital Globe. Over three years of internal conflict in South Sudan has led to severe food and nutrition insecurity. Nearly one-third of the population is in need of emergency food assistance, and the spread of violence has displaced 3.4 million people across South Sudan and into neighboring countries…
It’s 7:30 p.m. on a typical Tuesday evening in Kampala, Uganda, and Grace Kagawa is rushing to her small home in the Bwaise slum. After an 11-hour day working as a street sweeper downtown, and with little time and space to prepare the evening meal in her single-room home, the options for nourishing her two…