Using renewable energy to power mobile towers

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Lucy Mele

As the mobile subscriber base in India rapidly grows, so does the need for expanded service. Already home to 400,000 mobile towers, the country expects to build 200,000 more over the next two to four years in order to meet demand.

However, the majority of new mobile subscribers in India live in rural areas with limited or no access to electricity – meaning that in order to power many of these mobile towers, service providers need to search for solutions off the national grid.

Kanishka Bhattacharya (center) with teammates Devanshi Mehta and Tarun Mathur

“Right now, off-grid towers are powered by diesel fuel,” said Kanishka Bhattacharya, an associate consultant in Dalberg’s Mumbai office. “The problem is that diesel is expensive and prices are rising. It’s also a dirty fuel – it releases high volumes of carbon dioxide, which implies assorted negative effects with respect to health and the environment.”

According to Kanishka, India has the second largest mobile phone market in the world, and the mobile towers that power the market use 2.5 billion liters of diesel fuel each year. Not only is this fuel expensive, but unaccounted costs such as pilferage of fuel or electricity and transportation can add up to nearly half its price. Moreover, with each liter producing 2.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide, India’s mobile towers are responsible for the release of nearly six million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Kanishka is part of a Dalberg team currently assisting the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) in exploring ways for India and other growing countries to use alternative energy sources in mobile towers as a way to reduce this footprint. While part of this research is dedicated to investigating energy solutions, the main objective is to meet the needs of the various stakeholders to facilitate an accelerated adoption of the new technologies.

A solar-powered mobile tower in rural India

“The outcome we’re working toward is to effectively coordinate the large number of decision-making groups invested in Green Towers – governments, MNOs, tower companies, investors, energy service companies,” Kanishka said. “Getting all stakeholders to convene in one room with a common agenda, and with the overarching objective of green towers, will be a strong outcome.”

The Dalberg team will present an initial report of its findings later this month, with the ultimate goal of offering a solution and plan that will improve the environmental impact and sustainability of mobile towers for all involved.

“By defining a clear set of recommendations and a path forward, the overall impact we’re seeking to achieve is the adoption of renewable energy in all off grid sites over the next five years, as well as a substantial reduction in diesel usage and thereby a reduction in sector emissions,” Kanishka said.

Posted in Energy and Environment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Increasing access to nutritious food

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Lucy Mele

Thirty million children in Africa are malnourished, a condition that contributes to nearly two thirds of under-five mortality in the developing world.

Malnutrition and other hunger-related conditions can vary widely in severity, and when combined with structural problems such as lack of clean water or trained caretakers, they can become difficult and costly to treat. However, ready-to-use therapeutic foods, or RUTFs, have the potential to make treatment for malnutrition more effective, accessible and affordable in vulnerable populations.

“Before RUTFs were developed, anyone with severe acute malnutrition had to be treated in the hospital or clinic, which is very expensive,” said Naoko Koyama, a project manager in Dalberg’s Nairobi office. “RUTFs allow children to be treated by anyone at home, significantly reducing medical expenditures.”

Typically made of a peanut-based paste fortified with vitamins and minerals, RUTFs are prepackaged and most often purchased and distributed by aid organizations working in emergency settings. In addition to the therapeutic products used for treating severe acute malnutrition (or SAM), similar but less dense products, such as ready-to-use supplementary and complementary foods (RUSFs and RUCFs), have been developed to treat mild to moderate malnutrition.

Naoko is part of a Dalberg team supporting a partnership whose goal is to expand the market for these foods, lower the cost of production, and increase access for populations in need. Naoko said expansion is critical: the market currently needs over 200,000 tons of RUTF to treat SAM children, and UNICEF, which provides 70-80% of the supply, is only able to provide 34,000 tons.

“Procurement of RUSFs is growing, but still small, and the market for RUCFs is even less developed,” she said. “This leaves significant unmet demand, and a great market potential for producers. Considering its potential role in preventing malnutrition, we should be investing more in developing and distributing RUCFs not only through institutional buyers but also the commercial market.”

An important step toward expanding access to ready-to-use nutritious foods is developing alternative recipes based on locally available, cheaper ingredients and incorporating local suppliers into the business model, Naoko said. Currently, most RUTFs are produced in the United States and Europe, requiring costly and time-consuming transportation to reach those in need. However, new initiatives are emerging that engage local farmers, such as PepsiCo’s Enterprise EthioPEA, which aims to strengthen the chickpea supply chain and dramatically increase production in Ethiopia. New formulations for ready-to-use nutritious foods using chickpea are in development, and local processing could being within the year.

“By creating recipes that use local ingredients and investing in local farmers to help them meet quality standards, we would have double returns,” Naoko said. “Through our current project, we are exploring ways in which to do exactly this: increase local production of ready-to-use foods, expand market access to such products, and reduce the burden of malnutrition in a region that is so often plagued by severe famine as well as chronic malnutrition.”

Posted in Agriculture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Improving opportunities for girls in Senegal

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Lucy Mele

In Senegal, just 18% of girls are enrolled in secondary school, compared to 24% of boys.

The Sonatel Foundation and USAID have partnered to address this inequality, launching the Programme Equité Genre à L’Ecole, or PEGE, to encourage equal opportunities for female students in six key regions across the country.

The program is comprehensive: the most accomplished female students are given academic scholarships and money for basic necessities. They also have access to tutors and mentors, who regularly visit the schools to discuss any issues the girls are facing in their personal lives. Even the girls’ mothers receive small grants and business training to enable them to improve their family economic situation.

Daniela Nwaobasi, an Associate Consultant in Dalberg’s Dakar office, is part of a Dalberg team supporting the project in three of its regions: Kaolack, Diourbel, and Fatick.

“This project is very important because it’s focused on some of the regions in Senegal where we have the most issues related to gender inequalities in the educational system,” Daniela said.

Associate Consultant Daniela Nwaobasi visits a PEGE school with local authorities.

Daniela said that one of the program’s achievements was the successful launch of a summer camp, where the students have the opportunity to participate in social activities and additional classes to enhance their studies.

Upon visiting the camp and speaking with the girls, Daniela realized that many of them have limited French language skills and instead choose to communicate in the local language to avoid feelings of inadequacy. Recognizing that this gap could limit future opportunities for the girls, the Dalberg team reached out to its network and obtained nearly 2000 donated books from French association Les Enfants de Madame Ici. The reading books were not included in the original project, so Daniela decided to redirect a grant she’d won from the Moremi MiLead Leadership program to transport the texts from France to Senegal.

“I frequently go to the regions and see the difficult situation the beneficiaries live in,” Daniela said. “When I received this grant, I immediately thought of PEGE and decided to put my personal project aside and contribute to impact the lives of these girls.”

Daniela’s grant will also extend access to education for girls living in remote areas.

“The girls are scattered across regions, which makes it difficult to set up tutoring groups, especially for those in remote areas,” she said. “I realized the remaining grant money could provide at least three teachers specifically for these students, although the number is still not enough.”

Last month, the Dalberg team presented an update on the program’s first academic year to the Governors and school authorities in Kaolack, Diourbel and Fatick, receiving full support to continue from all three regions.

Daniela said the next phase of the project includes educating community members on the importance of keeping girls in school through monthly radio programs featuring the girls, their mothers and members of the community.

“The girls can use the show to talk about how the program has brought change into their lives, or their mothers can speak about how the program has improved the family economic situation,” Daniela said. “We want people to see how sending these girls to school today will develop the community for tomorrow.”

Posted in Education and Youth Development, Gender Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Expanding access to education through technology

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Lucy Mele

Last week, students and young professionals from around the world gathered at the 10th Annual United Nations Youth Assembly in New York City to exchange ideas on how youth could facilitate progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Tim Kotin, Associate Consultant

With a heavy focus on the increasing role of technology in development, this year’s assembly tackled topics ranging from mHealth and mobile money to new educational technology, a space that has been gaining attention as countries seek to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

According to Tim Kotin, an associate consultant in Dalberg’s New York office, there is approximately $2.5 trillion in global public and private funding currently being directed into education, not including household contributions.

“Most of this funding goes to infrastructure such as school buildings and classrooms, or to human capital investments in the form of vocational training programs or student loans,” Tim said. “But there is also some money going to investments in new tools and services. This is where technology could really play a role.”

Tim, who presented at this year’s assembly, spends his spare time as the Chief Technology Officer for e-Coach Solutions, a start-up he launched with two friends from high school that focuses on using information and communication technology to improve education quality and access. Their current objective is to help Ghanaian youth prepare for national secondary school entrance exams.

Tim, originally from Ghana, said his strong ties to the country and its growing technology sector made it a natural starting location for e-Coach Solutions.

“Ghana has one of the more vibrant and expanding ICT sectors on the continent so it was easily the logical choice for launching this effort,” he said.

The library at Tim's high school, where the e-Learning software was first launched

The company’s main software, called e-Test, is easily accessible to those living in cities with access to computers in their homes, in school or in cafes. The true challenge is reaching people in rural areas who do not have the same resources.

“The real question is: how do you get some of these technologies and services to really reach the bottom of the pyramid?” he said. “We’ve really been thinking strongly about how we can use different technologies, such as mobile phones, to deliver the same content to those who can’t easily access computers.”

Tim said his team at e-Coach Solutions intends to eventually expand the program across the African continent and then scale globally. The main message of Tim’s youth assembly presentation was to encourage attendees to think about how they could have the most impact on issues that are important to them and their communities.

“This is something small I started with my friends using skills picked up in school – it didn’t involve a lot of money, but it does have the potential to achieve significant impact as it becomes more established,” he said. “The most important thing is showing young people that it’s possible to get involved in development and start thinking about creative ways they can benefit their own communities.”

Posted in Education and Youth Development | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Innovating to protect Ecuador’s rainforest

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Lucy Mele

by Gill Cassar

Senior Consultant Gill Cassar

Many poor nations have tried to exploit their natural resources to jump-start their economic development. But what happens if these resources are buried beneath the world’s most bio-diverse ecosystem? The Ecuadorian government has developed an innovative solution that would involve permanently forgoing the extraction of millions of barrels of oil while still bringing in much-needed income for the development of the country.

The Yasuni National Park has the highest biodiversity per square meter in the world, with more tree species per hectare than in all of the United States and Canada combined. Experts estimate that 100,000 species of insect also inhabit just one hectare of Yasuni’s forests – the highest diversity per unit area in the world for any plant or animal group. Yasuni is also home to indigenous groups who live in voluntary isolation within the park’s borders.

Recently, oil companies discovered around 850 million barrels of crude oil beneath the park. Income generated from exploiting these reserves could help Ecuador’s people, a third of whom live below the poverty line. However, the consequences of opening up such an environment to drilling could be devastating: roads built into the forest, new settlements, and the potential for oil spills.

Yasuni National Park in Ecuador (by Gill Cassar)

An innovative project, hailed as historic by environmentalists, could offer a long-term solution for protecting Ecuador’s biodiversity and could be replicated by other bio-diverse countries like Indonesia and Brazil. Yasuni ITT is a fundraising initiative launched by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, to raise $3.6 billion (around half the value of the oil reserves) over 13 years in exchange for permanently forgoing drilling in the park. The United Nations Development Program would administer the fund, which would invest in renewable energy and community development projects around Ecuador. In January 2012, Yasuni ITT successfully reached its first target, raising $116 million. The fundraising target for 2012 has been set at $291 million.

Raising the total target will likely be a challenge. Ecuador has a history of political instability that may cause big investors to think twice before investing large sums in the project. Additionally, by keeping the oil beneath Yasuni off limits, the oil located on surrounding land that is still protected by community eco-tourism initiatives may become more vulnerable to drilling. But for the moment, Ecuador is making history in a way that protects the planet for posterity.

To find out more about the Yasuni ITT initiative, go to http://yasuni-itt.gob.ec/.

Gill Cassar is a Senior Consultant in Dalberg’s Geneva office. She is currently on sabbatical in Colombia and Ecuador.

Posted in Dalberg Community | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Empowering Haitians with mobile money

Posted on January 13, 2012 by dalbergblog

by Yana Watson

In the darkest moments following the devastating earthquake two years ago, the promise that Haiti might “build back better” provided a glimmer of hope. Building back better became both a rallying cry and a challenge to the international development community. Could tragedy in fact become a turning point in Haiti’s history? Would the development community be able to do things differently, introducing innovative solutions to old problems?

I have spent several months working in Haiti over the past two years and, like many of my colleagues at Dalberg, have come to love the country. In our projects, we’ve joined with the United States government to help develop a strategy to support the country’s reconstruction, with the Haitian Private Sector Forum to identify critically needed post-earthquake investments, and with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to increase access to finance in Haiti. Though much work remains to be done, I have seen instances of innovation in the efforts underway in Haiti that continue to keep my hope of building back better alive.

Yana Watson, Partner in New York


One of these exciting innovations is the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative, launched in 2010 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with USAID. Like Tameer’s EasyPaisa mobile banking platform, used in Pakistan following the floods, this initiative is an example of innovation empowering the victims of natural disasters: a $10 million prize pool to catalyze mobile money services in Haiti. Accelerating recovery and reconstruction after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a central impetus for launching the program, which aims to facilitate financial flows in the under-banked population and expedite humanitarian agencies’ delivery of cash assistance to victims.

Spurred by the prize pool’s rewards for reaching milestones in the delivery of mobile money services, two providers emerged. TchoTcho Mobile was launched by Digicel and Scotiabank, and T-Cash by Voila and Unibank. At present, both service providers offer consumers “cash in, cash out” and “person-to-person” (P2P) transfer services. In addition, Digicel offers mobile airtime purchases. Both service providers are expanding to include system payment functionality, and are developing interfaces to enable mobile wallets’ integration with bank accounts.

As measured by the volume of transactions, the adoption of mobile money in Haiti has been fast and is still growing. Both Digicel and Voila have made significant investments in customer acquisition, agent networks, marketing, and promotion. Although data is held confidential, interviews indicate demand to date has come from consumers and from the non-government organizations (NGOs) that use mobile money to distribute monetary aid and to pay people in cash-for-work programs. Indeed, six out of the 14 established aid programs that use mobile money in the entire world are operating in Haiti.

This fact alone is inspiring. And early research indicates that mobile distribution is indeed increasing recipient access and sense of empowerment. While mobile platforms still have much to prove, and their contribution to the quest to “build back better” remains to be seen, I believe the glimmer of hope for Haiti’s future burns brighter when innovations like this are introduced.

Posted in Mobile for Development | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Learning from leaders of social enterprises

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Lucy Mele

by Daniel Altman

Daniel Altman, Director of Thought Leadership

Social enterprise is hot. The idea that organizations can be run like businesses and still create benefits for society has captured the public’s imagination – just witness Jacqueline Novogratz, the head of Acumen Fund, appearing on the cover of Forbes magazine. Buzz is not enough, though. Like all businesses, social enterprises need to be financially viable. To find out what made the successful ones tick, Dalberg joined a team from Harvard to create its first-ever Survey of Social Enterprise.

Our first step was to reach out to leaders of enterprises that we perceived successful, including members of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, the Vodafone Foundation’s “World of Difference” program, and The Resolution Project. We didn’t set out to collect the experiences of everyone involved in social enterprise; the field is so enormous that generating a representative sample would have been almost impossible. Instead, we wanted to hear what these leaders thought were the keys to their success and the most important challenges that they still faced.

The leaders consistently cited recruiting and retaining skilled and motivated teams who shared their own visions as an important foundation for success. Another critical ingredient was preparation before launching an enterprise, with a strong emphasis on putting financing in place for enough time for the organization to find its footing. We also asked the leaders about how they made their cases to potential partners, investors, and employees. Most relied on data more than storytelling, and the vast majority said they were interested in the new tools for standardizing their results – GIIRS, IRIS, Pulse, and the like.

We saw some striking differences in the structure of successful social enterprises across industries and with respect to their sustainability. Non-profits were far more likely to rely on government contracts, grants, or donations, and they were also less likely to anticipate escaping from dependence on outside funding; these enterprises were most common in the fields of education and health. By contrast, for-profit social enterprises, particularly those in energy and consumer goods, saw financial independence as an important and reachable goal.

The report is filled with more observations like these, and it also contains quotes with guidance from the leaders themselves. All of them overcame obstacles on the way to success, and many said they were still trying to improve – even refining their business plans on a regular basis. For anyone starting a social enterprise, reading their recommendations would be an excellent place to start.

Posted in Strategy and Performance | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Collaborating on poverty reduction in Guatemala

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Lucy Mele

In Central America, the private sector is bringing together members of government, academia, and civil society organizations to develop an action plan for reducing poverty in Guatemala.

Leading the movement is FUNDESA, the Guatemalan Development Foundation, a private non-profit think tank formed by entrepreneurs in their personal capacity supported by the country’s private sector. Dalberg has been working with FUNDESA to support them in their effort to promote a multi-sector approach to economic development and solving poverty.

“We’re approaching the problem in two different ways,” said Leticia Kawanami, a consultant in Dalberg’s Washington DC office. “We’re looking at economic growth and industry diversification and strengthening, and we’re also looking at the country’s cross-cutting constraints and poverty reduction. The two approaches are mutually reinforcing.”

Consultant Leticia Kawanami visits a vegetable farm near Los Encuentros, Guatemala


Leticia said the approaches combine improvements in value chain competitiveness with smart philanthropic support. FUNDESA and Dalberg have been analyzing existing programs addressing issues such as nutrition, education, and poverty to identify the most effective solutions to support and fund. However, all of the solutions require cooperation among groups that have been historically reluctant to collaborate.

“Guatemala, as many other developing countries coming out of dictatorships or civil wars, faces a critical challenge, which is lack of trust and collaboration among actors,” Leticia said. “Particularly in economic development, collaboration between actors from the productive sectors and civil society is key to building competitiveness and leveraging resources for required investments.”

To facilitate thoughtful, practical dialogue, Dalberg, in partnership with Stace Lindsay of Fusion Venture Partners, helped FUNDESA bring these stakeholders together through a series of leadership seminars. Leticia said she was most impressed by the social capital generated by these sessions.

“It was great to see the private sector engaging in economic development in a way that goes beyond their business interests,” Leticia said. “From these workshops grew a very strong element of leadership engagement and a participative approach in designing roadmaps for economic and social development.”

FUNDESA’s progress was evident at October’s ENADE conference in Guatemala City, called “Poverty Reduction: Facing the Challenge.” The conference, organized by FUNDESA, is a forum for different stakeholders to discuss actionable solutions to gaps that hinder the economic and social development of the country. This year, over 3000 people gathered for an update on the goal set at last year’s conference: reducing poverty from 51% to 35% by Guatemala’s bicentennial in 2021.

On behalf of FUNDESA and CACIF, the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (Guatemala), Poverty Reduction Working Group Coordinator Salvador Biguria presented the productive sector’s 10-year poverty reduction plan to Guatemala’s presidential candidates, citing the need for leadership to work together for the plan to achieve its goals.

“Guatemala needs leadership that puts aside this polarization that has been generated in our country and that summons us to work together to truly improve our situation,” he said through a translator. “We offer you this proposal so that you may use it as your own and allow us to work hand-in-hand with your teams to improve it and ensure that all these improvements which are so necessary are implemented.”

Additional presentations from this year’s ENADE conference are available in Spanish on the FUNDESA web site.

Posted in Inclusive Growth | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Next Steps for Aid Effectiveness: Three Key Questions for the First Six Months After Busan

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Lucy Mele

by Adam Bradlow and Andria Thomas

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea, which attracted nearly 3000 delegates from across governments, multilaterals, and civil society, ended last week. What’s next?

Pundits and journalists immediately began debating the legacy of Busan, but delegates themselves know there are really six more months to determine the conference’s legacy – and, to some extent, the progress of the whole aid effectiveness movement. The conference’s final report points to June 2012 as the initial deadline for agreeing on a “light working framework” for the Global Partnership for Development Effectiveness. If the Global Partnership is to succeed, the OECD and UNDP—the two key bodies responsible for implementation—will need to effectively use the time between now and then to quickly develop a roadmap that engages donors and builds buy-in for any final outcomes.

To that end, the OECD and UNDP will need to answer three key questions:

First, how can we build the architecture of the Global Partnership in a way that makes it effective, inclusive and sustainable? While much of the focus post-Busan has been on identifying new indicators for maximizing aid effectiveness or on engaging emerging donors, relatively little attention has been paid to how we are going to achieve these goals. Addressing these issues effectively will require that UNDP and OECD establish a clear and realistic process for implementing the Global Partnership. Indeed, process may be just as important as substance: only a well-crafted roadmap will result in countries buying-in to the Partnership enough that that will contribute to developing, and then hold themselves accountable to, effective indicators.

Second, how can the differing priorities of the ‘emerging’ donors be reflected in the aid effectiveness movement, and particularly in the Global Partnership? The 24 countries currently in the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) make up the body of ‘traditional donors’, whereas Busan was notable for the focus on countries viewed as ‘emerging donors’, such as China, India, and Brazil. (Side note: though China and India have both had external programs in place since the mid-1960s, it has only been recently that they have been seen as joining the global donor club.) With non-DAC countries providing approximately 8-10% of global ODA, it is increasingly important to find ways to engage key emerging donors in the aid effectiveness movement. However, this raises natural questions about the effect that different priorities with respect to aid – and investment – will have on the existing aid effectiveness goals, as well as how these emerging donors can contribute through their different set of experiences and capabilities.

Third, how should the existing aid effectiveness indicators be adapted to measure progress towards achieving the Busan goals—and earlier targets as well? For all its shortcomings, the Paris Declaration indicators provided a transparent set of metrics that allowed everyone to measure progress. Even if most countries failed in implementing the goals outlined in Paris and Accra, the metrics provided a common basis for discussion about the causes and effects of this failure. Similarly, the OECD and UNDP would do well to translate Busan’s broad rhetoric into specific indicators by which to measure future success. However, as our earlier blog post on Busan indicated, there is still much work to be done in meeting the existing Paris Declaration commitments – and the end results that those commitments were supposed to produce.

While delegates were able to leave Busan with a rough framework for the future, the next six months will be critical in determining the success or failure of this framework in developing an impactful Global Partnership. By addressing the above three questions, the OECD and UNDP can help ensure that countries continue making progress on delivering aid effectively—and, ultimately, on improving the lives of the poor around the globe. Dalberg will be watching, and we look forward to reporting back on the progress towards establishing this Partnership in the coming months.

Posted in Strategy and Performance | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recognizing innovation in inclusive business

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Lucy Mele

by Rachel Wolf and Lucy Mele

International development increasingly looks to the private sector for solutions to poverty. However, this raises a number of questions for which there are not yet obvious answers. Is it possible for businesses to work towards a double bottom line without sacrificing profit? Does a business need to prioritize development results in order to have a positive impact on people living at the base of the pyramid (BOP)? Or perhaps more fundamentally: Are there solutions to poverty that truly support themselves?

Inclusive businesses work with people living at the BOP as suppliers, retailers, distributors, or customers. (Photo Credit: IFC)

Historically, governments and civil society have combated poverty through programs that require the ongoing support of donors – support that can be difficult to sustain in a tough financial climate. And although in hard times aid is often the first thing to go, private businesses continue to innovate and find creative ways to open new markets. Private businesses which create development results can offer a solution to poverty that truly is self-sustaining.

Inclusive businesses are one such group. They create development results by working with people at the BOP as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or consumers. The goal within the development community is to identify solutions to poverty that are self-sustaining through a profitable commercial revenue model. Doing so not only creates new markets and opportunities for businesses, but it also increases access to basic goods, services, and livelihood opportunities for those people at the BOP. As a result, inclusive businesses have become one of the most successful self-sustaining development solutions.

The Group of 20 has launched a contest to identify inclusive businesses with the most success and potential for future growth. Implemented by Dalberg on behalf of the International Finance Corporation, the G20 Challenge on Inclusive Business Innovation was announced last month at the G20 Leaders Summit in Cannes.

Andria Thomas, Project Manager in Washington DC

“The Challenge is looking to reach two kinds of businesses,” said Andria Thomas, a Project Manager in Dalberg’s Washington, DC, office. “For applicants, we’re looking for successful businesses that are already working with the BOP. Then, shining a spotlight on these businesses’ innovations will show players in different markets that they can also be successful by including people living at the BOP in their value chains.”

Andria, who is managing the Dalberg team implementing the Challenge, said one example of an inclusive business model could be a food production company that sources a significant part of its agricultural products from smallholder farmers. Another might engage low-income distributors, who can take a product into markets that are difficult to penetrate without local knowledge and connections. According to Andria, many inclusive businesses may not even be familiar with the term but choose to work with people living at the BOP because it makes the most business sense in their market.

Winners of the G20 Challenge will be showcased at the G20 summit in Mexico in June 2012 and will also gain entry to a series of G20 regional workshops focused on the inclusive business community. Additional information on the G20 Challenge on Inclusive Business Innovation, as well as the application, is available at www.G20Challenge.com or by emailing g20challenge@dalberg.com. Questions can also be directed to Andria Thomas directly at athomas-g20@dalberg.com.

Posted in Strategy and Performance | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment