Oro Legal was a bold response to the governance and environmental challenges posed by artisanal and small gold mining (ASGM) in Colombia. Between September 2015 and April 2021, Oro Legal improved the social, economic, and environmental performance of ASGM operators through legalization and formalization and mitigated the environmental liabilities from past illegal mining. This final…
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…
Why the corporate sector? Corporate investment in global development activities has steadily increased for over a decade. According to a study conducted by Devex in 2014, many development experts expect corporate global development to triple by 2025 while bilateral aid shrinks by 30 percent. Given these market trends, it is not surprising that development agencies…
Kule Chitepo, formerly the chief of party on a transboundary cooperation for resilience-building project in Southern Africa, is a leading expert in the development of world-class policy and practice for transformative integrated natural resource management. With over 20 years of experience in East and Southern Africa, he has held strategic leadership positions that have built…
Changing the way that malaria is diagnosed could help to revolutionize health care in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To this end, the Ivanhoe Fionet Partnership introduced new technology into the DRC to improve the quality of malaria data and diagnoses. The project brought Chemonics together with Fio Corporation, a health care technology…
Colombia is experiencing a gold mining boom, but approximately 80 percent of its gold mining production — with a value of $1.7 billion — is currently illegal. Uncontrolled gold mining in Colombia fuels social conflict, environmental degradation, and governance challenges. To address these issues, the Artisanal Gold Mining – Environmental Impact Reduction Activity, known as…
On March 15 and 16, the Chamber of Digital Commerce, along with Georgetown University’s Center for Financial Markets and Policy, hosts the D.C. Blockchain Summit. Taking place in Washington, D.C., the summit brings together government leaders, organizations, and innovators to discuss the blockchain technology and its applications across many contexts. Blockchain is rapidly emerging as one…
Anne Spahr is the chief of party of the USAID-funded Asia and Middle East Economic Growth (AMEG) Best Practices Project. She is a micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) finance and business development specialist with more than 10 years of experience working with farmers, fishers, and small business owners in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and…
On October 17, 2016, international development consulting firm Chemonics and technology company BanQu established the Blockchain for Development Solutions Lab. The lab represents the first concerted effort by a development company to build, test, and scale blockchain solutions to reduce poverty and increase aid effectiveness. “Blockchain technology represents a game-changing opportunity to alter the pace, scale, and…
Staff from USAID’s Higher Education Leadership and Management (HELM) project in Indonesia, implemented by Chemonics, will be presenting at the Higher Education Solutions Network Technical Convening (HESN TechCon) 2014, which takes place in San Francisco November 8-10, 2014. HESN is a multidisciplinary partnership between the U.S. Global Development Lab and seven universities around the world, including Duke…