"While the world has made huge economic gains over the past 50 years, this progress has been highly uneven. This is particularly acute in the agriculture sector, with many of the 500 million smallholder farmers around the world living on meager incomes and facing high levels of economic insecurity.
Despite some recent innovations and advances in including smallholders as market players, there have been few cases where truly widespread, market-level, transformative change towards inclusion has been achieved.
In this report, we explore the role of different kinds of capital in bending the arc of agricultural market development towards inclusive growth. We pay particular attention to how impact-focused players deploying capital that is flexible in terms of risk-return expectations can best deploy it in order to catalyze large-scale transformations towards inclusion."
"This introductory guide is aimed at entrepreneurs and investors who are new to the process of negotiating term sheets. It is not meant to provide legal advice; instead, it is designed to provide examples of certain common provisions that are not always easy to grasp.
This guide is a thorough summary of the options for setting up a business in Mexico including the governance clauses and the differences between legal structures. It covers third party investments to raise capitals, and explains the concepts of impact investment, capital instruments and key economic terms."
"This is a living document that aggregates crowd-sourced tips and factors to consider when conducting remote surveys (in particular phone surveys) while practicing social distancing. We will be updating this page regularly. Many thanks to those who have contributed to this collection thus far."
"The GeneraTOR will guide you through writing the different sections of a ToR / RFP. It will generate a word document with your saved information which can then be further refined and/or reviewed by others."
"Let’s be honest here: Entrepreneurs will need financing to get through this economic downturn. However, most of the investors that we’ve asked said that due diligence has been slowed either due to travel restrictions, their focus on supporting their existing portfolio of entrepreneurs, or those which already had term sheets in place. So where is this financing going to come from?
Our perspective for this article is the investor side of the conversation. What are angel investors thinking about during this global crisis: Is now the perfect opportunity to invest? Is it a time to hold on to your cash and hide it under the bed?It can make sense to halt making any investments all together – and focus on supporting the existing portfolio – given that most angels invest out of pocket. However, this could be an uncommon opportunity to make investments which could generate very good returns..."
"This research was commissioned as a result of growing interest in the topic of youth-centred Agripreneurship and had the objective to identify the key actors particularly within Academia, Non-Government Organisations and the non-profit sector to help young unemployed, or underemployed, graduates in Africa, or other developing economies, to enter into entrepreneurship in agriculture or agribusiness."
"The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of one productive development program (PROPYME) in a developing nation like Costa Rica. This program seeks to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) to innovate. Impacts have been estimated assuming that beneficiary firms are trying to maximize their profits and that PROPYME aims to increase these firms productivity. The impacts were measured in terms of three result variables real average wages employment demand and the probability of exporting. A combination of fixed effects and propensity score matching techniques was used in estimations to correct for any selection bias. The authors worked with panel data companies treated and untreated for the period 2001-2011. PROPYME's beneficiaries performed better than other firms in terms of labor demand and their probability of exporting. In addition, the dose and the duration of the effects of the treatment (timing effects) are important."
"The CE concept is fast becoming a new model for resilient growth in both developed and developing economies. In particular, it offers a viable alternative strategy for industrial development and job creation compared with the traditional manufacturing-led growth pathway for developing countries. Political and economic conditions in developing countries will necessitate different pathways to the CE from those employed to date in developed countries, but the CE opens up many new economic opportunities which developing countries are well positioned to harness.
Below we outline a series of priority steps through which national policymakers, international policy and financial institutions, and the ecosystem of stakeholders supporting the UN’s 2030 Agenda can support the deployment and scaling up of the CE in developing countries."
"The purpose of this paper is to address the role of accelerators as authentic learning-based entrepreneurial training programs. Accelerators facilitate the development and assessment of entrepreneurial competencies in nascent entrepreneurs through the process of creating a start-up venture."
"This guide provides useful insights and recommendations for any entrepreneur support provider committed to connecting entrepreneurs to knowledge, networks, expertise, and capital along all stages of venture development. Accelerators, incubators, mentorship networks, and other intermediaries supporting entrepreneurs from idea to scale will find useful insights and recommendations to make their programs more accessible to women entrepreneurs."