Latin America and the Caribbean

When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the livelihoods of millions of entrepreneurs last year, digitalization offered small businesses around the world a promising solution. In this Q&A, TechnoServe’s Global Entrepreneurship Director, Juan Carlos Thomas, speaks with the Executive Director of the Argidius Foundation, Nicholas Colloff, and Dalberg Advisors’ Global Knowledge Lead, Kusi Hornberger, about the future of digital technology for supporting entrepreneurs.

After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico lost an estimated 80% of its coffee trees, crippling an entire industry and leaving many coffee farmers reeling. Today, TechnoServe is working to revive the industry by helping thousands of smallholder coffee farmers significantly increase their yields and boost their resilience to future threats.

In a year when incomes dropped around the globe, TechnoServe’s nearly 300,000 clients and their families recorded a collective income increase of $188 million. Our 2020 annual report takes a closer look at the impact our clients achieved last year despite tremendous obstacles and shares stories of their resilience.

Over the years, Rosa Gonzales has seen firsthand how climate change has impacted her small farm. After joining a TechnoServe program, she learned techniques to improve her resilience to climate threats and is now transforming her old banana trees into new opportunities for her farm and family.

Numbers show that when entrepreneurs receive support, they can innovate, adapt, and overcome enormous obstacles. But there are millions of entrepreneurs in the world still facing the prospect of losing their business amid the lingering crisis. Civil society, government, and the private sector must work together to reach these women and men.

In this series, we check back with TechnoServe program participants previously featured on our blog, documenting how their lives have changed and progressed. In our previous story on Juliana Solís Barón, an entrepreneur and café owner in Peru, she was learning how to reinvent her business in response to strict lockdown restrictions. Find out how she is doing now, five months later.