E-commerce has long been hailed as a means of providing sustainable livelihoods to artisans in developing countries. Historically, these artisans have marketed their wares directly to local consumers, tourists and to export markets. To reach these global markets, local artisans have had to work with middlemen who mark up the prices significantly, leaving the local producer with only a fraction of the profit. Over the past decade, however, a number of initiatives have begun to harness ICTs to give artisans a competitive alternative to this exploitative system.

The most exciting and useful of these tools that I’ve found is CatGen, an open-source e-commerce platform created by PEOPLink. I had a chance to hear Dan Salcedo, founder of PEOPLink, talk about his software yesterday at USAID. Based on the information presented, CatGen has proved to be a great success.

Three members of the New Ventures team (Virginia Barreiro, Mareike Hussels, and Rodrigo Villar) attended the recent Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA) meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The conference featured more than 20 speakers from venture capital firms and development banks (incl. Stratus, Actis, MIF, & Aureos) who highlighted new trends in the investment environment in Latin America and how policy can support its growth.

David Thomas, Chairman of LAVCA and Managing Director of Intel Capital Latin America opened the conference, followed by the keynote speaker Ricardo Malavazi, Director of Petros, the pension fund of Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras and the second largest pension fund in Brazil. In order to diversify their portfolio, Petros has very recently entered the Private Equity market with 5-10% of their investment. It will be interesting to see if other pension funds follow suit and insert new capital into the private equity market. Other panelists spoke to the importance of raising the Brazil’s profile as an investment destination. Álvaro Gonçalves, President of the Brazilian Association for Venture Capital and Private Equity stressed the importance of national and regional associations working together to promote Brazil’s many success stories abroad.