News & Blogs

Increasing Youth Employment in South Africa

Q&A with Antony Altbeker

Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator is a large-scale employer-initiated project that seeks to overcome some of the forces of exclusion by working with partner employers to place some of the young people who are most excluded into formal sector jobs, and to increase the chances of those who are so placed of staying in employment for 12 months.

What inspired you?

I write about Harambe, which is an organization that works in South Africa that works to solve some big labor market mismatches we have where the economy has gone on a skill-intensive, capital-intensive growth path but the skill system and education system produce very few people who employers feel confident in using.... Read more about Increasing Youth Employment in South Africa

Financial Inclusion Through a "Brick" Savings Account

Q&A with Lucio Castro

Lucio Castro is the Director of Economic Development at CIPPEC, a leading public policy think tank based in Argentina. CIPPEC has developed an innovative mobile-banking tool targeted to low-income households: a commitment savings account combined with a credit line, attached to a goal related to housing improvement: “Caja Ladrillo” ("The Bricks" Savings Account or BSA).

What inspired you?

The housing deficit is a serious problem in Latin America. It is estimated around 3 million people in the region live in inadequate housing conditions. Another 3 million live in houses that are beyond repair. That is the motivation of our idea, our proposal.

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Unlocking Africa's Full Retail Potential

Q&A with Adetayo Bamiduro

Adetayo Bamiduro drives customer acquisition and growth and leads the management team at MAX, a hyper-local on-demand delivery platform for businesses and consumers in urban Africa.

What are you hoping to achieve?

What we are building essentially is a company called Max, but the whole concept is crowd-sourced on-demand delivery, for retailers and merchants in urban Africa. What we’re hoping to achieve is to create an infrastructure that allows merchants to be able to join the whole e-commerce revolution that’s going on across the world. You’ve seen Amazon in the US, you’ve seen Amazon in Europe as well, and a lot of e-commerce platforms in Europe.... Read more about Unlocking Africa's Full Retail Potential

Empowering Traditional Retailers to Drive Inclusive Growth

Q&A with Catalina Garcia

Catalina Garcia, Director of Communications and Sustainable Development for SABMiller Latin America, has spearheaded the “4e, Path to Progress” program, a $23 million commitment to help small retailers enhance their business and interpersonal skills, as well as their leadership potential in order to make their business grow and help them to improve their business environment. 

What inspired you?

What inspired us was the opportunity to share with different actors of society. [...] Our purpose with our program we are running with SAB Miller in Latin America and now in Africa is to transform and change the lives of many families, thousands of families in the region, that live in poor conditions.

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Expert View: Places Are Poor, Not People

Inclusion Hub spoke with Dr. Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard's Center for International Development, about how those who are excluded must be included in the inclusive growth process through interventions to increase their productivity

The Harvard Center for International Development (CID), The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Meta-Council on Inclusive Growth and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth convened the...

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Expert View: Government-led Innovation

Inclusion Hub spoke with Eduardo Lora, senior fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, about the role of government in advancing innovation

After the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit, it is clear that government and the private sector both have key roles to play in creating inclusive growth, but according to Eduardo Lora, senior fellow in the Growth Lab at the Harvard University Center for International Development (CID), these roles are more closely connected than is often realized.

Inclusion Hub spoke with Lora at the CID’s...

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Symposium to Feature Innovative Ideas on Inclusive Growth

Cambridge, Massachusetts – Harvard's Center for International Development (CID), the MasterCard Center on Inclusive Growth, and the World Economic Forum's Meta-Council on Inclusive Growth are hosting the 1st  Symposium on Inclusive Growth and Development on October 1-2, 2015 at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). The Symposium is part of a collaboration to find sustainable and scalable solutions to foster inclusive growth.

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Is inclusive growth attainable?

In today’s world, policy-makers and leaders focus their efforts on supporting drivers of economic growth, which has led to substantial increases in wealth for large numbers of people across the globe. Despite huge gains in global economic output in recent decades, there is evidence that social, political and economic systems are exacerbating inequalities, rather than reducing them. The unbalanced distribution of the benefits of economic growth has led to mounting social and political tension in many parts of the world, and is predicted to grow further in the future if we do not make growth...

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