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COVID-19 and a rapid analysis of Honduran enterprises' capacity to cope

Businesses around the world are facing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 crisis. This is particularly evident in countries like Honduras that have fewer resources to cope with and adapt to the shocks

Sergio Rivas
18 May 2020
MSD programmes need to adapt and innovate due to COVID-19

The longer term impact of COVID-19 in Uganda is still very unclear, but we cannot sit by and just 'wait and see'.

Debora Randall
18 May 2020
Time to #BuildBackBetter the tourism sector to create more and better jobs?

One new job in tourism creates one and a half indirect jobs, but COVID-19 has put a halt to that.

Elisa Mandelli
05 May 2020
Breathing new life into our market systems work

During 2020 Practical Action is revamping its Participatory Markets Systems Development (PMSD) approach to be more accessible, suit specific contexts and better address resilience, gender and the private sector.

John Chettleborough
30 Apr 2020
Eight lessons on making digital financial inclusion work for women in MENA

Tackling the financial inclusion gender gap to improve women's financial independence and employment prospects.

Chloe Gueguen
27 Apr 2020
Does scale matter?

How will all the nine billion people in the world of 2030 obtain safe, good food?

Julian Peach
23 Apr 2020
Impossible choices – questioning assumptions behind lock-down in low income and fragile contexts

COVID-19 response – checking our assumptions for fragile and low capacity countries.

Julia Lawson McDowall
16 Apr 2020
Market systems approach – all about business, really?

If we are to be useful allies to poor people then it is important we understand the difference between businesses and market systems.

Julian Peach
14 Apr 2020
Should we create decent work or make work more decent? Demystifying what decent work means for Market System Development projects

Focusing on job creation alone is not enough. Low quality jobs are precisely what keeps people locked into cycles of poverty.

Matt Ripley
07 Apr 2020
COVID-19 lockdowns threaten Africa’s vital informal urban food trade

Informal food markets are vital to feeding African cities, venues the poor rely on to buy and sell fresh food. Danielle Resnick argues that as governments impose COVID-19 restrictions, informal food traders should be helped rather than persecuted.

Danielle Resnick
06 Apr 2020
Measuring impact, managing failure

Clara Garcia Parra of Helvetas interviews Susanne Thiard-Laforet of the Austrian Development Agency to discuss 'impact' from the donor perspective and to share thoughts on learning from failure.

Clara García Parra
24 Mar 2020
MSD and job creation: can we measure what counts?

The need to ‘prove results’ in job creation easily creates incentives for unsustainable quick fixes that do not shift the conditions holding problems in place.

Mike Albu
03 Mar 2020
The schism in systemic change measurement

There are two schools of thought in the MSD community as to how to go about assessing systemic change. These are rooted in two different ways of seeing systems.

Jake Lomax
03 Mar 2020
Working with the private sector for systemic change: why build a partnership facility in the first place?

A look at the partnership principles that informed how USAID/Mozambique’s Feed the Future Agricultural Innovations activity designed its partnership facility.

Dan Langfitt
17 Feb 2020
Using data to promote women’s empowerment in MSD programmes: the experience of AWEF

Sharing some of the lessons learnt on effectively collecting and using data as part of the Arab Women Enterprise Fund.

Julia Hakspiel
11 Feb 2020