Now more than ever, private sector engagement is critical to achieving inclusive growth and ensuring sustainable and resilient outcomes at scale. The private sector creates jobs in emerging and frontier markets, is the driving force behind innovations, provides countries with a path toward self-reliance, and offers the scale and needed resources to tackle complex challenges. Chemonics’ Private Sector Engagement Technical Practice incorporates innovations in private sector engagement across Chemonics, facilitating high-impact partnerships and mobilizing private capital to leverage greater resources from the private sector and deliver transformative development outcomes. Chemonics’ robust convening power facilitates linkages between various actors across market systems and supports stakeholders to align interests, ensure additionality, and maximize outcomes to scale impact.
Our Services
MOBILIZING PRIVATE CAPITAL
With private capital flows outpacing traditional development assistance, the vital role of the private sector in global development has never been clearer. The growing alignment of interests among the private sector and donor agencies creates a strong opportunity for shared-value partnerships that leverage public and private resources through innovative financing structures, such as blended finance, first-loss capital, and guarantee structures, to enable scaled development impact.
MOBILIZING INCLUSIVE AND INNOVATIVE INVESTMENTS IN CLIMATE-SMART SOLUTIONS. Building on the USAID Biodiversity-Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (BioREDD+) Program and continuing under the USAID Paramos and Forests Activity, we supported 19 Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities implement eight REDD+ projects that stimulated private investment in new REDD+ initiatives. Similarly, in Brazil, through the $30 million Land Innovation Fund for Sustainable Livelihoods, we mobilize stakeholders to design, pilot, and scale climate-smart innovations for greater agricultural productivity and economic resilience. In Haiti, the USAID Reforestation project leveraged blended finance to decrease deforestation and support the conversion to clean cooking. Our implementation — including a proactive financing partner, a pilot de-risked with a guarantee fund, and high-level commitment from partners — led to Haiti’s first domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove manufacturing plant, helping thousands of Haitians to switch from charcoal to LPG.
STRENGTHENING INVESTMENT ECOSYSTEMS BY UNLOCKING PRIVATE CAPITAL AT SCALE. The USAID Tunisia Jobs, Opportunities, and Business Success Activity (JOBS) has enabled us to leverage the JossourInvest marketplace, a digital private equity platform that brings together companies with investors. The activity facilitated 27 transactions totaling over $20 million, with over 2,000 Tunisian small and medium enterprises registered in the marketplace. Through the USAID Democratic Republic of the Congo Investment Activity (DRC INVEST), we are also driving inclusive growth through an investment facilitation platform that aims to mobilize $100 million in private capital by linking local DRC companies with investors. In Uganda, through the USAID Strategic Investment Activity (SIA), we are strengthening the livelihoods of underrepresented and marginalized people by working to mobilize $140 million in private capital, benefiting 100,000 Ugandans. Further, through a flagship UK government program, Mobilising Institutional Capital Through Listed Product Structures (MOBILIST), we aim to unlock institutional capital at scale to reach the Sustainable Development Goals in developing economies. MOBILIST sources and selects emerging and frontier market investment products and supports them to list on public exchanges, unlocking institutional capital at scale for climate and development finance.
ECONOMICALLY EMPOWERING WOMEN TO DRIVE TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATIONS. Through the USAID Moldova Future Technologies Activity (FTA), Moldova Competitiveness Project (MCP), and Ukraine Competitive Economy Project (CEP), we are working to economically empower women entrepreneurs through intensive workforce development training focused on digital innovations. FTA, for example, launched the Smart Factory and Omnichannel Programs, which accelerate sales, increase competitiveness, and drive profitability and economic resilience. Specifically, the programs streamline and digitize procedures, improve the consumer experience, create new sales channels, and penetrate new markets, particularly for women-owned enterprises. MCP’s initiatives in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) raise digital skills among Moldovan young women to pursue education and careers in IT and engineering. Reaching over 16,000 girls and young women to date, MCP and FTA enable us to reduce the gender gap and promote STEAM youth education through the Future Classroom and Educational Robotics initiatives. In Ukraine, CEP hosted 14 “Women Biz Days” attended by 346 female entrepreneurs. This intensive entrepreneurship training program built skills and changed attitudes on gender stereotypes in the country’s business environment.
Facilitating High-Impact Partnerships
We serve as a force multiplier, facilitating linkages between market actors, providing targeted technical expertise, and leveraging on-the-ground networks. Through high-impact partnerships with the private sector, we bring together businesses, communities, and governments to address critical development challenges and capitalize on opportunities in new markets.
LEVERAGING PRIVATE SECTOR INNOVATIONS FOR SCALED DEVELOPMENT IMPACT IN THE AGRICULTURE SECTOR. Through the USAID Agribusiness Development Assistance to Rwanda (ADAR) project, we partnered with Starbucks to help farmers upgrade coffee-farming infrastructure, produce higher quality coffee, and secure loans for equipment. ADAR supported 50,000 coffee farmers to build and renovate coffee-washing stations, resulting in Starbucks selling Rwandan coffee worldwide. Similarly, through the Aflasafe Technology Transfer and Commercialization (ATTC) project, we commercialized the manufacturing and distribution of Aflasafe, which reduced the carcinogen aflatoxin, across seven African countries.
Under ATTC
ADVANCING DIGITAL AND TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES THROUGH PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS. Under the USAID E-PESO Activity, we partnered with the Philippine government and financial and technology firms to improve financial inclusion and spur economic growth, through e-payments on a mobile app, ReliefAgad. The private sector contributed $118,300 to E-PESO and $523,906 to ReliefAgad, with zero cost to the government. In total, 13 million families benefited from digital and manual payouts. In addition, we unlocked the growth potential of women in Pakistan through an innovative Facebook partnership as part of the USAID Pakistan Small and Medium Enterprise Activity (SMEA). We provided targeted assistance to 6,000 small and medium enterprises, including 600 women-led enterprises. In partnership with Facebook’s #SheMeansBusiness campaign, we supported marketing training and financial education for over 400 women-led small and growing businesses.
INCREASING THE CAPACITY OF THE TOURISM SECTOR. Through the Building Economic Sustainability Tourism (BEST) project, we launched the Pathways to Professionalism initiative with Intercontinental Hotels Group, receiving $21 million and more than a half a million hours in skills training from participating hotels. BEST hosted workshops with private sector partners like Expedia Group and Travelocity to train youth in hospitality. Fifty trainees graduated from the pilot program and 80% of them received employment offers. The initiative was then adopted by 45% of Jordan’s four and five-star hotels, provided employment to 55% of entry-level workers, and expanded to include 1,275 graduates. In addition, USAID’s Visit Tunisia project is partnering with CrossBoundary to help tourism companies raise private capital. The initiative aims to support at least 12 Tunisian small and medium enterprises and mobilize over $20 million of capital.