Note about the piece: I had the honor of moderating the Closing Plenaries for the ANDE Conference on the Future of the SGB Sector in a Covid-19 Post Recovery. We focused on two of the ANDE pillars in the morning plenary: Decent Work & Economic Growth and Gender Equality with our panelists Payal Dalal at Mastercard and Jimmy Bettcher at Partners at Food Solutions. And the other two pillars in the evening plenary: Climate Change & Environmental Action and Diversity & Equity in Action with Anita Ramachandran at MicroMentor and Ernesto Herrera Guerra at Reforestamos.

In 2019, the West African entrepreneurial ecosystem experienced major development, with the rise of tech hubs and impact investing activities. There was particularly an increase in direct and indirect investment funds from Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), as indicated in ANDE’s recent State of the Small and Growing Business Sector report.

Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation is a USAID-funded program that works to build partnerships with agribusinesses to help them sell new products and services to smallholder farmers, who represent a potential market of 500 million customers. Through this program, partner businesses are provided with investment assistance, expert guidance and the technical support they need to expand in emerging markets and create a growing customer base for their agricultural innovations. Since 2012, Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation has worked with 65 private sector partners in 24 countries, which have introduced 132 new agricultural technologies to over 1.4 million smallholder farmers.

Thanks to some hard work, new tech skills, and the patience and continued dedication of our incredible members, we consider the first virtual Annual Conference a success! This year, we welcomed around 250 participants across 148 organizations and 42 countries; our 49 speakers and moderators alone spanned sixteen countries.