FCDO Workshop Leveraging for development: Engaging with the private sector to achieve developmental goals
On 29 September, our team facilitated a workshop hosted by the FCDO on private sector engagement in the development sector. The workshop explored various approaches adopted by programmes to work with different private sector players to achieve developmental goals. To this end, five programmes were invited to present. The programmes work at different economic levels, engaging a range of public and private sector players.
Presentations from each of the speakers can be downloaded below:
Heidi Ober, the Programme Director at Tetra Tech for the independent evaluation of SPRING, presented on the lessons learnt from engaging individual private businesses to reach a pre-defined beneficiary group, in this case vulnerable, adolescent girls in marginalised communities.
Mark Thomas, Senior Vice President from Nathan Associates presented on Ghana MADE, a programme that originally adopted a standard market development approach before refining this methodology half-way through its implementation in northern Ghana. Working with regional players throughout the agricultural value chain, the programme worked to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.
Thomas Pascoe, UKNIAF’s Programme Director at Tetra Tech, gave insights into how the programme works with federal development agencies to mainstream climate, gender and inclusive infrastructure laid economic growth by facilitating the agencies’ awareness of and engagement with the private sector.
FFA stimulates innovative African focussed solutions to African challenges by leveraging private sector investment to fund and provide technical support to start-up businesses in FinTech, HealthTech, EdTech and AgriTech. Their CSO, Alina Truhina, presented FFA’s business model and talked about the kind of support young, innovative businesses need to thrive.
Utilising a market systems development approach, this programme strengthened financial systems focussing on the inclusion of the poor, and increased jobs in several agricultural linked value chains and textile industries in Ethiopia. Nebil Kellow from FirstConsult shares what lessons can be learned from this programme for engaging the private sector in the specific context of Ethiopia.