Helping Developing Countries Raise Incomes and Sustain Growth
Helping Developing Countries Raise Incomes and Sustain Growth
Abt Associates assists the work of the United States Agency for International Development to strengthen the economies of developing countries by improving agriculture, trade, and economic and financial infrastructures. Our work helps raise incomes and reduce poverty by improving competitiveness, enhancing public-private partnerships, and helping countries meet World Trade Organization requirements.
Understanding the relation between growth in agriculture and poverty reduction in low income countries
Insight: High rates of economic growth may rapidly reduce the proportion of the population in poverty. However, there is a tendency to generalize that economic growth reduces poverty, when, in fact, it is agricultural growth that accounts for virtually all of the poverty decline.
Client Impact: The report explains the important role of growth in agriculture in raising incomes in developing countries and provides important understanding that can be applied to USAID efforts to implement effective and sustainable development programs.
Helping West African companies and governments build trade capacity and export to the U.S. market
Insight: The West African Trade Hub (WATH) is a USAID project enhancing West Africa's trade competitiveness. Abt Associates manages WATH's export business development component, building trade capacity and preparing sellers to approach the U.S. market and take full advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
Client Impact: Our intense focus on export-ready companies has enabled us to help dozens of small businesses take advantage of export opportunities, mostly in agriculture, textiles, and apparel.
Increasing farm incomes and rural non-farm employment in Guatemala for USAID
Insight: This project focused on helping small farmers and micro-entrepreneurs gain access to sustainable, high-quality financial and technical services. This entailed enhancing the skills of a variety of institutions that serve small farmers, cooperatives, and micro-enterprises and encouraging them to locate in, and expand services to, rural areas.
Client Impact: The project helped small farmers in specific areas of Guatemala expand their incomes through better production and marketing, and helped micro-entrepreneurs in the same target areas expand their businesses.
Assisting the US Agency for International Development in turning country smallholder farmers into sustainable agricultural enterprises and effective actors in the global marketplace
Insight: We recommended improving country farmers' business practices to enhance their ability to identify, pursue and exploit market opportunities; increase on- and off-farm income; unleash powerful rural growth multipliers; and accelerate the development of a vibrant, competitive private sector
Client Impact: We trained over 1,500 farmers in modern agricultural and business practices, resulting in six-fold increase in agricultural sales, from $919,000 in 2003 to over $7 million in 2005
Providing technical assistance to Egyptian food processing companies to enhance competitiveness and increase exports
Insight: In addition to providing critical technical assistance, Abt Associates helped Egyptian firms apply for and receive financing for capital investment, working capital and export financing, which included pre-shipment (purchasing inputs such as packaging or raw materials) and export discounting.
Client Impact: Egyptian food processors gained an important insight into global markets, customer preferences, export requirements, sanitary and phytosanitary issues, and management resulting in a significant increase of exports. We successfully facilitated loans for agri-business clients with Egyptian financial institutions for more than $132 million and $46 million more in progress at the time of project completion. We worked with a total of 104 successful clients on this task.
