Insights

Closing gender gaps in the agricultural value chain

Closing gender gaps in the agricultural value chain

Women farmers make up half of the agricultural workforce in East Africa. Yet they rarely have equal access to the opportunities and assets men can access to maximize their productivity and improve their lives. Digital technologies can be transformative in bridging the gender gaps across agricultural value chains and making progress toward achieving gender equality.

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Acting on the Unknown: The Missing Data in Digital Agriculture

Acting on the Unknown: The Missing Data in Digital Agriculture

We have been working to advance the use of digital technologies in agriculture since our founding. Over the years, and still this year, we continue to confront a gap in current data on smallholder farmers and the organizations that serve them — a gap that makes program design exceedingly challenging. What impact does this lack of data have on products and services designed for smallholder farmers, and what could be a potential remedy?

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Introducing “Her Business, Her Future”: An Open Source Training Program for Women Micro-Entrepreneurs
YEAR: 2022, Type: Blog, Area: Women's economic empowerment, Country: Global Deanna Fanelli & Shelley Spencer YEAR: 2022, Type: Blog, Area: Women's economic empowerment, Country: Global Deanna Fanelli & Shelley Spencer

Introducing “Her Business, Her Future”: An Open Source Training Program for Women Micro-Entrepreneurs

Running a small business is hard. Research shows that effective support programs for women micro-entrepreneurs bundle components that address the financing gap and help them build their soft and hard skills. That is why we created the “Her Business, Her Future,” an open source, global training program designed to build capacity for women micro-entrepreneurs to own and manage their businesses.

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Agent Network Strengthening for USAID

Agent Network Strengthening for USAID

Over the past six years, SIA has supported USAID in advancing digital financial services market systems in countries where USAID works through the Agent Network Strengthening (ePayments) Program (ANSP). In the final report, we reflect on our work and the impact it has had in building capabilities across the DFS ecosystem.

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Reflections on the 2021 Global Findex

Reflections on the 2021 Global Findex

In June, the World Bank released its latest update of the Global Findex Database since 2017. Truly remarkable global gains have been made over the past decade. We also need to keep working. Here are our reflections on the latest dataset, and what we’re doing to address the most persistent barriers and gaps that remain.

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Four lessons for growing women’s digital financial literacy at scale

Four lessons for growing women’s digital financial literacy at scale

According to GSMA’s latest Mobile Gender Gap Report, Literacy & Digital Skills is still the top barrier to women’s adoption of mobile internet and the second highest barrier to women’s mobile phone ownership. Here are four lessons we’ve learned from implementing “Hey Sister!” that could help others working to grow women’s digital financial literacy and uptake.

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