Even in the poorest of countries, business opportunities exist. People have demand for goods and services, and they have the potential to supply them. All too often, though, markets in these countries fail.
In the winter of 2012, I joined TechnoServe directly from a management consulting position in San Francisco. Four months and more than 100 stakeholder interviews later, what was once a side note on a scope of work now has great impact on how TechnoServe looks at dairy interventions.
TechnoServe, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has helped farmers in Tanzania to improve their production, form business groups and sell their produce in bulk.
The great Peter Drucker once said, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” The story of Liset and Ximena Contreras embodies this quote and much more.
The 54-member farming cooperative began working with TechnoServe in August 2010 to improve their business skills and diversify into a new market opportunity: purple passion fruit. With TechnoServe’s assistance, Tiret Self-Help Group built a passion fruit nursery and sowed the first seeds in December 2010. As the first vines begin…
The 39-year-old mother of four grew food crops to feed her family, but earned little income from her tomato crop because of poor quality and limited access to markets. Martha, like many farmers in her community, had no choice but to accept the low prices offered by…
Mónica’s path to independence began three years ago when she joined an association of women from the San Lucas Tolimán region, who learned practical skills like weaving in an effort to find income opportunities. Mónica’s husband had abandoned the family, leaving her in debt and with few opportunities for employment.
The average Haitian lives on less than $2 a day, hunger and malnutrition are commonplace—and the January 2010 earthquake made matters worse. But more than 200,000 Haitians have the key to a better future growing in their backyards: the mango tree. Just weeks after the quake,…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bdJqDAlKv-E Pascasie Mukagasana has known great hardship. She was separated from her children and her husband, Athanase Nzigiyimana, for a year following the 1994 Rwanda genocide. They reunited, only to lose a son to illness. In 1998, Athanase was wrongfully imprisoned for 10 years. Alone with her children, Pascasie struggled…
Carmela Francisca Sacuj Matzar is a leader among Mayan women in San Andrés Semetabaj, a poor rural community in central Guatemala. As the founder of Asociación Visión Maya Mujeres, a women’s association that produces textiles and cultivates mushrooms, Sacuj is helping 50 women to generate income and improve the…
