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Impact Leadership Under Pressure: Four Lessons from Resilient Organizations
Impact leadership is hard even in the best of times. But as Erin Worsham and Kimberly Bardy Langsam at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) explain, recent crises have put added stress on leaders and organizations across the sector. Drawing on insights gathered during COVID-19 and other crises, they share four key lessons that can help impact leaders navigate the pressure of the present while preparing their organizations for the future.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Creating a Local Means of Exchange for African Entrepreneurs: How a Blockchain-Based Community Currency Gained Traction in Tanzania
In African communities, the lack of disposable income often hinders economic growth, and many local entrepreneurs are excluded from centralized, formal finance. Malik El Bay at the Encointer Association and Alinagwe Mwaselela at Jukumu NGO explore how their organizations are addressing this issue by leveraging blockchain technology to enable community members in Dar es Salaam to independently create and manage their own local cryptocurrency. They explain how this community currency model can be leveraged to support economic growth and entrepreneurship across Africa and other emerging markets.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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The False Choice in African Energy Access: Why the Sector Must Balance the Needs of Households and Businesses — And How it Can Electrify Both
Energy access is essential to Africa’s development. But as Alba Topulli at CLASP and Todd Moss at the Energy for Growth Hub argue, progress has stalled over a false choice: Should the continent prioritize solar home systems that bring basic access to households — or should it invest in making electricity cheaper and more reliable for businesses, to power job creation and economic growth? They explain why the energy access sector must resist this perceived trade-off, and propose four key principles that can allow Africa to accomplish both of these goals.
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- Energy
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Leveraging the Currency of Trust: How Social Commerce Data Can Inform Risk Management and Bring Formal Finance to Women-Led MSMEs
Across emerging markets, millions of women entrepreneurs operate in trust-based economies invisible to formal credit systems. As Nabilla Prita Fiandini and Monica Christy at MicroSave Consulting (MSC) explain, these businesses rely on their social reputations and customer relationships to survive, and often use platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to market their products. They share insights from a recent MSC report based on surveys and interviews with hundreds of social sellers across Indonesia, exploring how data from these entrepreneurs' social commerce activity can be used to boost their access to formal finance.
- Categories
- Finance
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Storytelling for Velocity, Not Visibility: Why African Development Organizations Need a New Communications Playbook
Something subtle yet profound is changing in how global development organizations in Africa communicate about their work and impact. According to Chrisphine Omondi, a communications specialist with experience across the continent, these organizations have often relied on external communications consultants who produce reports, recommendations and strategies, then exit before those plans are fully implemented. He argues that this model no longer fits the pace and complexity of Africa’s evolving development ecosystem, and explores how African organizations can create a more holistic, systems-based communications model that aligns with the broader changes that are reshaping global development.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Productive Use Has Challenges: What’s Holding the Sector Back — And How Companies and Investors Should Respond
Productive use of renewable energy (PURE) technologies such as solar irrigation, cold storage and agro-processing can have a transformative impact in Africa and other emerging markets. But though the potential of these technologies is undeniable, the scale isn’t. As Daniel Waldron, Chris Emmott and Kristi Chon at Acumen, and Duda Slawek at Open Capital explain, few agricultural companies are delivering PURE solutions, and fewer still are growing fast enough to meet the scope of the problems they are trying to solve. They share new research and analysis that illuminate the challenges that are holding the sector back, and propose three ways forward.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Rethinking What it Means to Start a Business: Why Systemic Venture Building Matters for Africa’s Food Future
Africa’s entrepreneurs are often seen as risky investments not due to any limitations of their own businesses, but because of the risks in the systems around them. As a result, as Dieuwertje Nelissen, Eveline Jansen and Rachael Kirui at Enviu argue, it's important for development stakeholders to move beyond de-risking individual businesses and to put greater effort into strengthening and de-risking the systems that support them. They explore this systemic approach in the context of African agriculture, sharing a venture-building model that can help entrepreneurs reduce early-stage risk and scale sustainable impact.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Interoperability is the Answer to Scaling Up E-mobility in Africa: What the Continent Can Learn from the EU and India’s Divergent Approaches
Electric mobility in Africa is an emerging but highly fragmented market, defined by uneven policies, diverse vehicle types and limited scale. As a result, according to Ashay Abbhi at Intellecap and Nyaga Kebuchi at Sustainable Transport Africa, interoperability has become a critical enabler for the sector. They explore how interoperability — the ability of battery or charging systems to work seamlessly with multiple fleets of vehicles — can turn distributed hardware systems into a usable network, and discuss how the EU and India’s different routes toward interoperability can inform Africa's e-mobility transition.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Transportation
