The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) released its annual State of the Small & Growing Business Sector Report on June 15, 2016. The report explores the state of the global SGB sector and also dives into regional market insights. It discusses the hurdles for emerging market entrepreneurship—access to capital, talent and markets—and assesses how well the sector is addressing these.
The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) believes that the small and growing business sector is the lynchpin holding the promise of emerging market impact investing together, Petra Cahill writes. In this article, she interviews ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner about ANDE, how ANDE connects the small & growing business sector in emerging markets to impact investing capital, and what ANDE finds that small business entrepreneurs most need.
Sergio Goldman, a consultant and former financial market executive who now writes for one of Brazil's major newspapers, explores the growth of the impact investing market in the country. He highlights the Impact Investing mapping exercise that ANDE conducted in 2014, along with the work various ANDE members have been doing locally.
Setting out to do good with your career is no longer just the realm of the charitable sector. Jessica Tasman-Jones spoke with social entrepreneurs from business-owning families trying to tackle the world’s ills one by one, and references ANDE's research on impact fund managers on the African continent.
Non-governmental organizations have a unique role to play in supporting enterprises in frontier markets. Several ANDE members are actually part of an impact investing network that ANDE and InsideNGO support to help NGOs address the key skill gaps that social enterprises experience in emerging makets.
Disrupt Africa reported last year the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and Emory University’s Social Enterprise @ Goizueta were to conduct a study on the impact of accelerator programs across the world. Tom Jackson reports on the first part of this research, which has now been released after the partners worked with seed-stage accelerator Village Capital to examine 15 programs and the influence they had on the startups that participated.
ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, participated in an agribusiness-focused event and pitch competition Ghana, where he identified access to talent or human resources as a major challenge facing small businesses. The Mobile Business Clinic, which is part of the Lundin Foudation in Accra, hosted the event, selected three winners at the end of the competition.
ANDE's Director of Strategic Development reflects on a week spent in Amsterdam with entrepreneurs from around the globe for the launch of VilCap Communities. She realizes that attracting capital may actually be the easy part, compares do developing talent alongside financial growth, and that understanding the effectiveness of accelerators may play a key role.
As traditional sources of capital show no signs of growth, as donors are making a push to work with more local organizations, and as impact investing and the role of entrepreneurship in development have gained more attention, INGOs are exploring their options. Adva Saldinger writes about how ANDE members are working to identify new ways to help out the missing middle.