Activity Description: The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) was established by the SMEDAN Act of 2003 to promote the development of the MSME sector of the Nigerian Economy.

The Agency positions itself as a "One Stop Shop" for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development. Micro Enterprises are included in the clientele of the Agency since they form the bedrock for SME’s.

Activity Description:

Population Services International (PSI) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that harnesses the vitality of the private sector to address the health problems of low-income and vulnerable populations in more than 60 developing countries. PSI achieves its mission principally through social marketing of family planning and health products and services, and behavior change communications.

Activity Description: Men on the Side of the Road (MSR) is giving thousands of unemployed men in South Africa the vital skills, tools, and social infrastructure to improve their lives. Extremely high unemployment rates in South Africa have forced men to stand on the side of the road, looking for temporary work and accepting low wages and abuse. MSR founder Charles Maisel saw the potential for these day laborers to recognize and utilize their own strength to create change from the bottom up.

Activity Description:

An estimated 15.7 million people in Brazil work in the informal economy as microentrepreneurs, outnumbering formal sector entrepreneurs by more than three to one. Of these informal microentrepreneurs 93% run profitable businesses. However, 84% of these microentrepreneurs did not have access to credit.

In November 1996 at a meeting in Fortaleza, the World Bank and Banco do Nordeste, a development bank formed to support growth in northeastern Brazil, decided to initiate a collaborative process to jointly implement a local development program based on the idea of micro-credit. Motivated by the fact that small informal companies – family owned and small properties - were not being served by the Bank's financing activities due to the restrictive regulation of Brazil's Banking Systems, Banco do Nordeste and the World Bank decided to develop and launch a pilot low-income bank, targeting micro-entrepreneurs from informal sectors.

When asked why Banco do Nordeste decided to launch a microcredit institution, executive director, Stelio Gama Lyra Junior responds simply “we are a development bank; it was a logical step”.3 The fast growth and success of the CrediAmigo program suggest that he might
be right. After only three years in operation, CrediAmigo had already become Latin America’s second largest microcredit institution both in terms of number of loans and the amounts invested.

With the experience gained trough its pilot program, CrediAmigo officially launched its microcredit program and has continued to grow steadily. In fact, it has achieved 40% growth each year since 1998. As of May 2003, CrediAmigo has 123,203 active clients with an active portfolio of R$72 (US$ 24.69) 9 million and an average loan size of R$ 581.35 (US$ 199.33). CrediAmigo offers loans at 3.5% monthly rate (approximately 51% per year). As an incentive for customers to pay on time, CrediAmigo reimburses its customers 15% of their interest payment when their loan is paid in-full and on-time.10 The maximum loan size allowed is R$4,000 (US$ 1,371.51). In the future, CrediAmigo plans to continue to expand its services throughout the northeast of Brazil, as well as offer greater product/service selection such as savings accounts and insurance products.

Click here to read the full report on CrediAmigo.

Activity Description: DSM is a German company that creates and innovates products and services that promote a healthier, more sustainable, enjoyable, and efficient way of working and living. DSM's Nutrition Improvement Program, which focuses on the fortification of foods with vitamins and minerals in order to prevent disease and mortality due to malnutrition, is DSM's first initiative in the context of the 'Base of the Pyramid'. This is a new development in the field of sustainability to which the company will increasingly be paying attention. The 'Base of the Pyramid' concept involves the development and implementation of new, innovative business models in developing countries in order to profitably serve the needs of the four billion people living on at most a few dollars per day.

Activity Description:

Aavishkaar (a Hindi word that means innovation) India Micro Venture Capital Fund (www.aavishkaar.org) came into existence to finance socially relevant, commercially viable and environmentally friendly enterprises that do not have access to project financing – loan or equity – from traditional financial institutions. Aavishkaar India fills an important niche as it is positioned between microfinance and traditional venture capital funds with its promise of equity support to small businesses. The projects that Aavishkaar support are in the range between Rs.500,000 (USD 10,000) and Rs.5,000,000 (USD 100,000).

Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund (‘Aavishkaar’) concentrates on supporting micro enterprises based on grassroots innovations and seeks to:

Activity Description:

Rwanda, a tiny East African country recently rent by a famously savage civil war, has found hope in that most colonial of crops: coffee. By riding booming demand in the developed world for specialty brews — and, to a certain extent, by turning its own challenges to its advantage — Rwanda has made premium coffee-growing a national priority. That has not only brought in a trickle of money to a country with little else to trade, but provided a stage on which one-time blood enemies can reconcile their terrible history.

Activity Description:

Medicine Shoppe India, the second largest pharmacy chain in India, is establishing health centers in rural India aimed at providing high quality yet affordable health services for poor and marginalized rural consumers.

Medicine Shoppe India has considerable success serving India’s urban populations – with a strong emphasis on safety and quality – and with the help of Acumen Fund’s expertise will be able to expand into rural market.

In addition, Medicine Shoppe India has innovated a new store format where health services would be offered at no cost, but medicine or other pharmacy products would be sold at affordable prices. To build awareness of their products and services at the village level, Medicine Shoppe India hopes to partner with one or more rural ICT network orchestrators.

The Challenge
In India, close to 12% of rural income is spent on healthcare and 66% still do not have access to critical medicine.Hospitalized Indians spend on average 58% of their total annual expenditures on healthcare, with over 40% borrowing heavily to cover expenses and over 25% falling below the poverty line because of hospital expenses. Almost 7 out of 10 medicines sold in rural India are either substandard or counterfeit.

The Impact
The company currently operates 103 stores across six states, mainly in urban areas as of May 2006. Over the course of the next five years, Medicine Shoppe will establish 130 health centers in rural areas.

Activity Description:

China has set up a special fund to support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to China's Ministry of Finance (MOF).

The funds, which come from the central government's budget, will offer China's SMEs free financial aid and loan repayment subsidies of up to 2 million yuan (250,000 U.S. dollars) per project, according to a policy document issued by the MOF and the National Development and Reform Commission.

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Activity Description: Accion International is a microfinance organization out of Boston, which provides small loans to 1.5 million people annually.  Its mission is to give people the tools they need to work their way out of poverty. By providing "micro" loans and business training to poor women and men who start their own businesses, Accion International's partner lending organizations help people work their own way up the economic ladder, with dignity and pride.

Activity Description: KENYA NATIONAL LIBRARY SERVICE (KNLS) operates mobile library trucks and two  Camel mobile libraries in Wajir and Garissa in North Eastern Kenya for primarily pastoralist people, who have no access to schools or static libraries.  In the Northeastern Province, the illiteracy rate is 85.3%, compared to 31% nationally.  

Better-suited than a car to the terrain, the camel transports books to the nomadic communities from Mondays to Thursdays. From Fridays to Sundays, the camels are released to go and feed, recuperate and vetted for any signs of disease and treatment.

Activity Description:

In 2001 the CROMABU project (www.cromabul.com) was designed to gather and disseminate relevant information regarding crop prices in local and international markets in English and Kiswahili to help empower micro and small enterprises. Youth, particularly ex-students from primary and secondary schools, are the key channel of communication between the CROMABU and the targeted small-scale farmers in Magu; they are employed as agents and use bicycles to collect and distribute all relevant documents to the villages.

Activity Description:

Of the half a million or so villages in India, about 310,000 villages have been declared to be electrified and 80,000 more villages remain completely un-electrified.

Decentralised Energy Systems India (DESI) runs a "Village EmPower Partnership project" to help provide energy and jobs in rural villages of India in an environmentally sustainable way. Each small biomass
power plant (100kw) built by DESI is owned by a village cooperative and creates at least 50 direct and indirect jobs per village. The increased income particularly helps improve the health and overall quality of life for women, while also increasing farm output and incomes.