"This guide is aimed at helping companies interested in developing business relationships with smallholders. It provides a framework that identi!es common challenges, highlights solutions and shows how these can be implemented through cooperation at different levels. In this way, the guide aims to support company representatives engaging in inclusive agribusiness practices with practical tools and a comprehensive overview of potential solutions and collaborative approaches. Practitioners from development agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), intermediaries and other organisations working to develop and support inclusive agribusiness will also find useful insights here.

The guide can also prove useful for those in related businesses. Agribusiness companies that own land and lease it to smallholders, or which themselves farm the land of smallholders, can also learn about core challenges, organisational models and options for strategic action. Companies offering services to smallholders, including financial, advisory, information or communication services can use the guide to identify how their offers complement other business models."

"This report identifies challenges and success factors for small, micro and medium businesses (SMME) in South Africa that use an inclusive business approach. It provides policy recommendations on how to support SMME spread their potential to tackle social and environmental problems in South Africa."

"This report, "Growing Impact" follows IFC’s first assessment of the global market for impact investing and investor practices, "Creating Impact", published in April 2019. In this new report we explore more deeply the size and makeup of the impact investing market and analyze the practices of impact investors, drawing on data from a survey of the signatories to the Operating Principles and a set of 32 signatory case studies. The case studies illustrate how we are creating a powerful market force by embracing a shared vision and approach."

"A common concern with efforts to directly help some small businesses to grow is that their growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors. This study tests this possibility using a two-stage randomized experiment in Kenya. The experiment randomizes business training at the market level, and then within markets to selected businesses. Three years after training, the treated businesses are selling more, earn higher profits, and their owners have higher well-being.
There is no evidence of negative spillovers on the competing businesses, and the markets as a whole appear to have grown in terms of number of customers and sales volumes. This market growth appears to come from enhanced customer service and new product introduction, generating more customers and more sales from existing customers. As a result, business growth in underdeveloped markets is possible without taking sales away from non-treated businesses."

"In developing this paper, we conducted almost sixty interviews with thought leaders and active practitioners from a variety of organizations: investors, capacity development providers, corporations, researchers, network leaders, development finance institutions. In addition, we canvassed the growing body of literature in the field and leveraged our own experience in the sector.

Throughout the paper, and in a dedicated section at the end, we identify a number of prime areas that represent opportunities for the sector. While these are important opportunities, our list is not exhaustive. Indeed, this sector is still quite young – opportunity abounds for those interested in supporting SGBs in the challenging context of developing world markets."

"This study is the first piece of detailed research on gender lens investing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). It adds to other regional analyses of gender lens investing emerging in the last few years in Asia and in Europe (authored by the same team as this report at the ESADE Institute for Social Innovation). The specific objectives of the study are to: describe the opportunity for different gender lens investing strategies in LAC; highlight key case studies and current activities in LAC; and offer top-level recommendations for how different players can put gender lens investing into practice."

"We combine a Randomized Control Trial and a lab-in-the-field experiment to explore how participating in an 'entrepreneurship and gender' training affects the intra-household bargaining position of women. While male preferences dominate household decisions, the training attenuates the bargaining gap considerably. Inviting husbands to participate in the training does not further improve outcomes."

"We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with randomly assigned gender and race. Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions."

"Investigating what characterizes women’s entrepreneurship and what type of enterprise development support they need sheds light on the importance of understanding what drives exclusion and inclusion in social, political and economic processes in societies. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by discussing the importance and practicalities of gender-aware WED. Gender-aware WED recognizes the gendered risks and uncertainties in which women operate their businesses and assists women in coping with these insecurities at home, in the community and in the business environment. In addition, it strives to create a level playing field by ensuring access to, and control over, resources and opportunities for all entrepreneurs, regardless of business type, industry choice, gender, age, health status, location or ethnicity."

"Small and medium-sized enterprises make up a large part of Sri Lanka's economy, with over one million SMEs accounting for approximately 75 percent of all businesses. These are found in all sectors of the economy and are estimated to contribute about 45 percent of total employment in Sri Lanka. Women's ownership of formal small and medium-sized enterprises is low, at around 25 percent of all SMEs, and most women business-owners struggle to transition away from informal micro-scale businesses, in part due to limited access to finance and lower business capacity of women entrepreneurs. This report presents a snapshot of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) across Sri Lanka, with a focus on the different impacts experienced by women-owned and managed businesses (WSME), as compared to those owned by men (MSME) and those owned jointly by a woman and a man (JSME)."