Browse by Theme: Value Chains

When I arrived in Yasubi, a small and industrious village in the Okapa district of the Papua New Guinea highlands, I could see that most of the services we normally take for granted – like electricity, running water, accessible roads – were absent. Most of the hard-working, coffee-producing families live in traditional round huts, with smoke from a wood fire rising through the grass roof so that, from outside, the structure looks like some huge vegetable just pulled out of a pot of hot water.

Many of us dream of a world free from poverty, but how can this be realistically achieved, especially for smallholder farmers who make up the majority of the world’s poor?

One important answer to this question is found in our new book, Making markets more inclusive: Lessons from CARE and the future of sustainability in agricultural value chain development. In it, we highlight lessons from one of the most intensely developed agricultural value chain initiatives in the world: CARE’s work in the dairy value chain in northwest Bangladesh.

Last month I was in Islamabad, supporting the efforts of the CARE International team there, who have led a very successful set of engagements with the private sector to address social issues in Pakistan. In a country beset by a number of political and social tensions, CARE has decided to flip the traditional paradigm to ask, instead of what companies “can do for us”, what “CARE can do for business”. It’s a bold move, and one which is so far paying dividends.

CARE International and the Fairtrade Foundation are hosting an event at this year’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham to bring together business, civil society and politicians – Inclusive chocolate? How can private sector partnerships ensure women farmers and workers get a bigger chunk of the benefits?

CARE International and the Fairtrade Foundation are hosting an event at this year’s Labour Party conference to bring together business, civil society and politicians – Inclusive chocolate? How can private sector partnerships ensure women farmers and workers get a bigger chunk of the benefits?

Football teams are a system and markets are systems too... I am a market systems practitioner who lives and works in Brazil. After the emotions from Brazil’s semi-final failure calmed down, I started to draw a few analogies from the World Cup. Painful as it was (for me at least), Brazil’s epic 7-1 defeat might teach us a few things about how to make market facilitation initiatives more successful and resilient.

The close of 2013 brings with it the inevitable series of lists of the best and worst of the year. It's good to reflect on deeds past, but this list takes a different approach: it describes what these lists should say a year from now.

Six business specialists from across CARE International answered the question: "What is your vision for inclusive business in 2014?" They identified 6 ambitious but achievable milestones for the new year that could change the future of inclusive business.