"Women-led and women-owned businesses continue to be a largely untapped resource for economic growth in emerging economies. There is promising data, highlighted in this report, for the opportunity to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystems supporting women in emerging economies, despite the negative impacts of the pandemic. This report underscores the potential for women’s businesses, especially startup businesses and high-growth entrepreneurs, and emphasizes the need to fill critical gaps in access to financing, technology, social networks and training. "
"In 2018, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), with the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), launched the Gender Lens Impact Measurement (GLIM) Fund to enhance the awareness, rigor, and quality of impact measurement for organizations supporting entrepreneurs with a gender lens approach. Each grant from the fund went to a partnership between small and growing business (SGB) support organizations in Latin America and researchers to use measurement for driving improved gender-inclusive strategies. This synthesis report summarises the tools and lessons from these grants on using measurement to increase gender inclusion for SGB support organizations."
ANDE’s Digitalization Learning Labs are a series of convenings that aim to support the digital transformation of the SGB sector by exchanging knowledge among ANDE members and evaluating their needs. This document is divided into the three modules of the Learning Lab sessions that were carried out by ANDE chapters. Each includes the purpose of the stage, the diverse methodologies that support digital transformation, and reflections on how and why to use them, based on the experience of three ANDE members.
"This knowledge brief seeks to capture the key takeaways from the recent series of three Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) Learning Labs hosted by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, South Africa Chapter (ANDE SA) in partnership with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation. These learning labs explore the importance of understanding impact in context, engaging multiple stakeholders to ensure appropriate contextual perception and the need to guarantee accurate reporting and impact measurement. This enables greater transparency in the data collection process, improved ability to interrogate assumptions leading to greater data-driven decision making to appropriately measure ones’ impact – be it at an intervention or organisational level."