Recent Publications & Learning
Doing development differently starts with better evidence and learning.
Doing development differently starts with better evidence and learning.
We kick off the first of a two-part blog series – co-produced by FHI 360 and MarketShare Associates – on Rethinking the Future of Women’s Empowerment in response to the global pandemic with exploring COVID-19’s impact on women’s economic engagement in Egypt.
Read MoreThe influence of gendered social norms has not been systematically analyzed or widely incorporated into financial inclusion programming. This diagnostic aims to identify social norms that affect how women access, use, and benefit from financial services. The goal is to guide practitioners toward a better understanding of the underlying dynamics. By identifying actionable insights, practitioners can design interventions that target the root causes of consumer behaviors that limit the potential benefits of financial inclusion interventions for women.
Read MoreTools and resources for a gendered approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) during the COVID-19 pandemic compiled by the Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) program team.
Read MoreThis blog, co-written by MEDA and MarketShare Associates, summarizes key learnings from INNOVATE’s three-year initiative assessing the potential of non-traditional finance to enable adoption of smallholder agricultural innovations in South Asia, South America and East Africa. The blog shares insights on customer centricity, smallholder products and services, smallholder household decision-making, and policy and regulatory transformation. The authors also provide recommendations for implementers, policy makers, donors, and the private sector to re-think how programs and policies are implemented, and how products and serviced are designed and delivered.
Read MoreThis webinar builds on MSA’s work supporting the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) to stimulate increased women’s economic empowerment through a market systems approach. Funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and working in Jordan and Egypt, AWEF has been one of DFID’s flagship women’s economic empowerment programmes and the first to innovatively apply a market systems development approach to enhance women’s participation in markets.
Read MoreThis blog builds on MarketShare Associates' work supporting the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) to stimulate increased women’s economic empowerment through a market systems approach in Jordan and Egypt. Drawing from AWEF’s Practitioner Learning Brief, Making Digital Finance Work for Women in the MENA Region (2020), the authors explore opportunities and challenges of Digital Financial Services (DFS) and highlight eight lessons on how to design and implement interventions that can pave the way for women’s digital financial empowerment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and more widely.
Read MoreThis Practitioner Learning Brief builds on MarketShare Associates' work supporting the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) to stimulate increased women’s economic empowerment through a market systems approach. The Brief explores opportunities and challenges of Digital Financial Services (DFS) and highlights eight lessons from 14 case studies on how to design and implement interventions that can pave the way for women’s digital financial empowerment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and more widely. This Brief aims to encourage others to test and scale innovative approaches to making digital finance work better for women’s empowerment.
Read MoreThe INNOVATE Final Synthesis Report, produced with support from MarketShare Associates, brings together key results, insights and lessons from the research conducted by MEDA INNOVATE and its partners from 2017-2020, with the goal of learning and documenting experiences of non-traditional finance for catalyzing smallholder agricultural innovation adoption.
Read MoreAs part of INNOVATE, a three-year initiative assessing the potential of non-traditional finance to enable adoption of smallholder agricultural innovations in South Asia, South America and East Africa, MEDA and MarketShare Associates produced a learning paper examining the role of digital platforms and the importance of customer and user experiences to reach and serve smallholder farmers. Through a review of the literature and in-depth interviews with firms leading the development of digital platforms for smallholders and relevant ecosystem players, this paper examines lessons learned for improving customer experiences and fostering increased uptake and sustained use of AgTech innovations.
Read MoreMarketShare Associates was engaged as MEDA’s INNOVATE learning partner to produce a series of briefs highlighting key results and learnings from its research portfolio assessing the potential of non-traditional finance to stimulate agricultural innovation adoption among smallholder farmers in South Asia, South America and East Africa. This brief focuses on experiences and lessons learned from the pilot project implemented by I-DEV International, “Mobile Money & Pay-AsYou-Go (PAYG) Innovation to Scale: AgTech Adoption in the Smallholder Value Chain”.
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