Competition awards grants to best small-scale development initiatives
2008 finalists offer practical solutions to food crisis
Competition’s goal is to identify innovative projects that can be expanded and replicated
September 24, 2008— Social entrepreneurs from 42 countries bring their ideas for low-cost agricultural development to the annual Global Development Marketplace competition at the World Bank this week.
The three-day event, held almost every year since 1998, showcases promising solutions to development problems. This year, 100 finalists were selected from 1,800 proposals for grassroots initiatives to help communities struggling with the current food crisis.
The 25 winners of the 2008 Global Development Marketplace on Sustainable Agriculture will receive up to US$200,000 each for innovative projects linking farmers to markets, improving access to land and tenure, and addressing climate change and biodiversity.
A total of about US$4 million in grants will be awarded September 26. The World Bank, Global Environment Facility, International Finance Corporation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and GTZ are co-sponsoring the 2008 competition.
Ideas to Help Poor Farmers and Consumers
This year’s event focuses on agriculture as a potential pathway out of poverty for the 75 percent of the world’s poor who live in rural areas. The competition offers an opportunity to identify and support ideas that can benefit poor farmers and consumers.
"We know the reality and we know the crisis: 2.1 billion people still live on less than $2 a day and three out of every four of those poor people live in rural areas. We have an obligation to search for new and better ways to fight poverty,” says World Bank Vice President Katherine Sierra.
“The Development Marketplace is a launching pad for new approaches to development; it has the power to focus attention on the kind of originality that can deliver tangible benefits to those struggling with poverty in rural areas."
Innovative proposals this year include using beetles and worms to produce organic soil fertilizer, making fuel blocks from discarded duck beddings, and using olive mill solid waste for clean energy, just to mention a few of the finalist projects.
Scaling Up Projects
Since its inception, the Development Marketplace has awarded more than $46 million in grants, supporting more than 1,000 initiatives through their proof-of-concept phase. Using the grant funding as a launching pad, projects often go on to scale up or replicate elsewhere, winning prestigious awards within the sphere of social entrepreneurship.
Pump Aid, a 2006 winner of a $120,000 grant, secured an additional $25 million to expand water and sanitation services to reach 8 million people in Zimbabwe and Malawi over the next five years.
E-commerce For Farmers, a start-up company in the Philippines, won a grant to train 24 farmer cooperatives in the use of online bulletins and text messaging to broaden market reach. Six years later, b2bpricenow.com, Inc boasts equity investors and a profit. In 2007, it reached over $2 million in online transactions.
Representatives from both projects will serve as jury at this year’s Development Marketplace.
Development Marketplace Competitions—held at the global, regional, and country level—attract ideas from a range of innovators, including civil society groups, social entrepreneurs, academia, and businesses.
The program is administered by the World Bank and supported by various partners. Co-sponsors Global Environment Facility (GEF), the largest global funder of projects to improve the environment, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have partnered with the World Bank already in several past competitions.
‘Smart and Well-Targeted Investments’
Monique Barbut, CEO of GEF, considers the Development Marketplace an ideal opportunity for recognizing ideas that may have a significant impact on sustainable development:
“In these projects, there is an overarching trend of blending agricultural aspects with climate change and biodiversity. Given the enormity of the need and the constraints on funding, we, as well as our partners of the international development community, need to open our coffers for smart and well-targeted investments to improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable societies. It's satisfying to see that our support for the Development Marketplace enables the winners of this year's global competition to become part of that joint effort.”
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