In Sierra Leone, an NGO sponsors a business plan contest that strives to change the gender makeup of the country’s entrepreneurs.

The African Foundation for Development in Sierra Leone (AFFORD-SL) creates jobs for underrepresented individuals and offers coaching and mentoring services. Despite Parliament's current review of a 30 percent quota for women to assume positions in government and leadership roles, women are largely marginalized in society. Most rural women don’t work outside the home unless it’s in agriculture, and those that do are subject to the largesse of their husbands and other males.

But AFFORD-SL, along with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development, seeks to improve their status through a competition called Business Bomba.

Entrants from four regions in Sierra Leone—Freetown, Makeni, Bo and Kanema—pitch business plans to NGO representatives and independent business advisors. The rigorous four-phase competition includes workshops, training and mentoring. Twenty-two finalists are selected with 12 winners representing five categories, one of which is open only to women. Each finalist must pitch a business plan to the panel of judges—a daunting task to many, as a large percentage of the population isn’t college-educated. The top winners in each category receive $23,000 to help jumpstart his or her business. Former winner Eva Roberts developed Morvigor Tea, a homegrown variety that is now available throughout the capital, Freetown.

AFFORD's contests are a low-cost way to shine light on those innovative, effective small business ideas, one Eva Roberts at a time.

Reforms and investment are opening new doors and promising growth for Myanmar. But what’s exciting for some Burmese and the West brings a downside for many refugees.

The country, also known as Burma, has made headlines recently for its rapid political reforms and promotion of economic opportunity. These days in Yangon, “foreign businessmen in well-tailored suits are driven down potholed streets and past crumbling colonial buildings to meet potential partners...[and] hotel owners, whose businesses suffered during [recent] years are raising prices for what few rooms they have available,” reported the New York Times last month. But as the West eases longtime sanctions against Myanmar and begins to invest, the changes could further shut out an already suffering group: refugees from the country’s six decades of internal strife.

Large numbers of Burmese continue to live outside their country in refugee camps. Most hope to return and find work in their homeland someday. But if they lose access to education and other social services now, they also lose the chance to gain from market access down the road.

Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was easing restrictions on financial transactions of private groups involved with development and humanitarian assistance work in what has become Southeast Asia’s poorest country, according to the Huffington Post. The relaxed restrictions come as a response to civilian elections in the military-dominated country, which brought parliamentary seats to the opposition party of long-time human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Other western countries quickly followed suit, as the European Union and Japan also loosened sanctions, according to The Development Newswire.

But amid growing foreign investment and glimpses of promising market-based growth, rapid internal changes also bring challenges for the refugee population.

Close to 150,000 refugees who fled conflict currently live in tent camps on the Thai side of the Thai-Myanmar border. Most are from the Karen state, a region ensnared in turmoil for decades. Unable or afraid to return home, and not permitted to work in Thailand, they depend on international aid for survival and livelihood. But between global economic pressures on aid groups and the exploding need for aid within Myanmar, outside support to border camps is drying up fast.

“Before, we were in a very difficult position, but at least we had the food that we needed," Saw Eh So, a refugee living on the border, told The Christian Science Monitor. "Now we have to find ways to find the food ourselves."

Social service money is running low, too. The Karen Refugee Committee - Education Entity, which oversees education in the camps, reports that it has lost much of its funding. While cuts in aid began before the easing of sanctions and are heavily influenced by global economic and political pressures, rapid changes in Myanmar’s relations with the West are expediting the process.

Many NGO workers on the border are “concerned that the funding is being withdrawn too quickly, without proper withdrawal plans, and before the refugees are ready to go back,” according to the Christian Science Monitor. But some see exciting new opportunities within Myanmar and believe that refugees will quickly seek to return home as reforms continue.

The return of Burmese refugees to their homeland is clearly desirable. But it won’t happen overnight, and refugees need to return to a safe and stable home with promise of economic opportunity. Market growth is slower than one election, and the home region of most refugees is still far from being a peaceful land of economic promise.

Saw La Plan, a Karen leader in Umpiem refugee camp, says he's not going back yet, because his home state has a long way to go despite broader reforms in the country. “There is still fighting, no development, and landmines everywhere," he told the Christian Science Monitor. "We have to stay here.”

But when refugees do eventually return, they’ll need education and skills to compete in the growing market-based economy that has the West so excited about Myanmar.

European Union officials respond to the easing of sanctions against Myanmar in this video from Agence France Presse.

Can a city start over from scratch? NYU economist Paul Romer's original TEDtalk got people wondering, and Honduras bit.

In this week's New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR's “Planet Money,” describes what Romer's Honduran utopia might be like, and what's needed to make it work.

Wealthy countries spend billions per year on projects designed to reform governments, build modern utilities or teach their workers new agricultural techniques. For all the cash, there has been very little success. Sponsoring a charter city, Romer said, may be a better (and cheaper) way to help.

RELATED: Honduras envisions a Caribbean Hong Kong, but 'charter city' meets criticism

In Haiti, one nonprofit may have figured out how to make a pot o' gold out of a port-o-pot.

Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, or SOIL is dedicated to protecting soil resources, empowering communities, and transforming human waste into a valuable resource in Haiti. Leah Nevada Page, SOIL's development director, has the scoop on poop.

What's the importance of ecological sanitation and how is it perceived in Haiti?

When SOIL first started in Haiti, we provided seminars and trainings on a range of different environmental designs (water treatment, solar energy, etc.) but improved sanitation quickly emerged as the most hotly requested intervention. Our "ecological sanitation"-generated compost has also been well received—our first compost buyers were local community organizations based in the areas using SOIL toilets. People knew they were producing a good thing!

Given the Ecosan training seminars' popularity, are there plans to grow?

Due to high demand, SOIL offers monthly seminars on EcoSan in Port-au-Prince, alternating every month between English and Creole. SOIL is currently working with the Haitian government department of water and sanitation (DINEPA) to organize and host the first ever national EcoSan conference this summer.

From the toilet, to the collector, to the aeration pit, to the farmer, to the crop. How many people does SOIL's ecological sanitation team directly/indirectly impact?

Toilet wastes are picked up regularly by the SOIL Poopmobile and driven to a decentralized SOIL waste treatment site where they are composted for a minimum of six months in a process that adheres to the highest public health safety standards. The resulting compost is then used in SOIL's own demonstration farms or sold to organizations working on agricultural and reforestation programs. SOIL is currently providing sanitation to an estimated 20,000 people and is generating compost at a rate of 5,000 gallons per week.

Have you seen this model elsewhere?

Ecological sanitation is actually surprisingly prevalent in large urban centers in the U.S. Los Angeles and New York, among many others, actually treat some or all of their waste using these techniques and sell the resulting compost to landscaping supply companies. In Los Angeles they've found that this significantly reduces the city's sanitation costs as they don't have to pay to dispose of the waste (instead they are paid for their "wastes"). SOIL's model for Port-au-Prince is not that different from what is already working in large urban centers across the developed world—we just cut out the need for water and large sewer infrastructure, thereby making it affordable, replicable and sustainable.

Check out SOIL's video.

RELATED: Expensive poo: The World Bank tells us how much poor sanitation costs

In southern Afghanistan, the promise of a well-paid urban career is luring women to keyboards and men to needlework.

INVEST, a vocational training program by Mercy Corps in Helmand Province, teaches men and women trades that can lead them out of poverty. Only 28 percent of the adult Afghan population is literate, and most children can’t attend school due to either the rigidly conservative society or safety concerns. INVEST trains locals in various trades, from construction to calligraphy to mobile phone repair to sewing. So far, INVEST has enrolled nearly 9,000 students, 900 of them women.

Program organizers assumed male students in Lashkar Gah, a city of more than 200,000, would vie for construction jobs such as masonry and metal work. But some, such as former farmer Agha Wali, have chosen less stereotypically male occupations such as tailoring because it offers a chance to own their own business. Many women, on the flip side, have bypassed home-based occupations such as embroidery and embraced the tech sector.

While older students are learning skills to work from home and don’t expect office jobs due to societal constraints, the younger generation aims to forge a career path, even the women. Some liberal-minded parents are happily sending their daughters to the school. Twenty-year-old Shamsiya’s parents have encouraged her passion for learning. She hopes to one day become a computer teacher.

I want to serve my country so that our country has a good future as its future depends on us youngsters,” she told Mercy Corps. “When I go home, my parents encourage me to study and attend my lectures...every member of the society should have knowledge as through knowledge, we can solve all our problems.

When it comes to global food security, more doesn't always mean better.

As the international community prepares for the UN's Rio +20 Conference on Sustainable Development in June, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has released a report that criticizes what it sees as a singular focus on increasing farm yields. According to the report's contributors, the "more production" approach is straining the environment and natural resources, while contributing to a growing nutritional imbalance in which one billion of the world's people are overweight or obese and another one billion are undernourished.

Instead of pursuing policies that emphasize increased farm productivity at any cost, the report argues for more sustainable approaches to agricultural development that mitigate the effects of climate change and promote equal access to nutritious foods.

The report also warns of a possible conflict between public and private interests as large corporations play an increasingly dominant role in the global food system. It urges policymakers to focus on investments in small and medium farmers, which are seen as a more sustainable approach to strengthening food security.

Read the full report here.

This article is the third in a three-part series exploring the role Mercy Corps played in bringing solar power to rural Uganda.

In our first article, we explored how Mercy Corps conducted a comprehensive market analysis, which painted a picture of strong potential demand for solar lanterns from rural farming families. In the second, we discovered how Mercy Corps connected suppliers to shops and shops to customers by building buzz about solar.

Bringing any new product to market is bound to hit some bumps in the road. While smoothing those bumps to get solar products to rural families in Uganda, Mercy Corps discovered that they had cleared a path for more life-improving products, too.

Let’s talk about the bumps in the road first:

Bump #1: Not all suppliers are created equal
In choosing supply partners, Mercy Corps looked for solar companies that not only offered highly rated products but companies that were also interested in entering the northern Ugandan market and who had the bandwidth and appetite for the risk required to meet the needs of rural customers. A few partners jumped on board. But, even after careful vetting, one company and its products failed to meet quality expectations of early businesses and customers. This company was dropped from participation in Mercy Corps’ project due to its poor performance. “Market spoilage” is a serious risk for new technology and one Mercy Corps worked hard to both overcome and mitigate.

Crowding-in a new and unfamiliar product that doesn’t work as well as advertised, breaks too easily and for which there are no trained technicians, is a fast way to lose most potential customers in a market,” said Kim Beevers, Mercy Corps’ then project manager. “Quality control is an important role for a nonprofit to play in a market facilitation project that necessitates building relationships between suppliers, resellers and buyers.

Another way to dampen seller confidence and to lose customers is to market a great product with an inconsistent and unreliable supply. One of the selected solar company participants offered a higher-quality, multifunctional and lower-cost product that shopkeepers promoted and customers demanded. But, shortly after the project got off the ground, the company mismanaged its inventory, causing a large -- but thankfully temporary -- gap in supply. In the interim, local business partners were forced to turn away customers.

Bump #2: Getting there is half the battle
To boost the supply side of the chain, Mercy Corps hosted a ‘meet and greet’ for rural shop owners to develop personal connections with the urban solar companies and local financial institution branches to find out more about the products and what financing might be available to begin or to grow their businesses to sell solar. Though many shopkeepers expressed interest in selling solar through prior information sharing events, fewer than expected attended the event.

Mercy Corps discovered that the main culprit here was transportation – travel is expensive and takes significantly longer in places where the roads are bad and buses are infrequent. Often, there is no mode of transport at all. Simple solution? To keep these shop owners involved, Mercy Corps took to the phones and even met them in their shops in-person to reiterate the information shared at the networking event and to deliver contact information for solar companies. Then, the Mercy Corps team shared shop owner contact information with each solar company. In their expansion plan, the team will be hosting more meet and greets in more locations closer to shopkeepers in hopes that transport will not be as big of an impediment to connecting interested parties.

Bump #3: Perceptions vs. Reality + Money

Facilitating markets is not necessarily expensive but it is certainly time-consuming and labor-intensive. Building relationships with a foundation of trust and building confidence in a totally new product takes a lot of time and effort. For the Uganda team, one hurdle was overcoming the popular misperception that northern Uganda still requires humanitarian responses to its needs and isn’t ready for market-driven, long-term economic development approaches. They proved this wrong; had Mercy Corps given away solar lanterns rather than facilitated sustained, market-driven access to solar lanterns, the number of products and the duration of availability would have been cut short. Understanding the gap between perception and reality, beginning with a thorough market assessment, is the first step to bridging it.

Introducing solar products to rural, northern Uganda took one person—with support from colleagues—nine months and $19,000, that included conducting the energy poverty survey research, managing the market analysis, identifying and matching up solar companies and local shopkeepers, managing a range of partners, hosting product demos for consumers and handling marketing and communications.

Because much of this upfront work can inform the project’s expansion, piloting solar in new regions will be even more efficient. Mercy Corps Uganda plans to scale their solar project across four districts in the coming months and another three next year. They are looking for new, improved and varied products and services for which this market facilitation model could also be applied.

Solar is just the beginning
Perhaps most significantly, the channels built to get solar products to rural families have paved the way for other important—sometimes life-saving—products.

We asked ourselves, how can we leverage the channels we’ve created to get more supplies to farmers, more useful products to families?” said Beevers. “How can we drop a Wal-Mart into rural, northern Uganda?

Mercy Corps is working to develop a mobile-based catalogue of items that shopkeepers or households can purchase via phone, have shipped to their shops to stock for local consumers to buy or directly to their homes. The team is focusing on pro-poor products that have been proven to make a strong impact in the lives of low-income families. Poor distribution models and mechanisms prevent the market penetration that these kinds of products could--and should-- have. Products include, oral rehydration salts, hand pumps, water filters, adjustable eye glasses, brick presses, fuel efficient stoves, micro-irrigation systems, mechanized tillage and borehole spare parts.

Our model will use innovations in mobile technology to provide a marketing, payment and information management backbone,” said Tim Sparkman, Mercy Corps Uganda Deputy Country Director and Director of Programs. “We want to leverage economies of scale for both companies and consumers.

If solar smoothed the bumps along the road to northern Uganda, the team’s next plan will turn that road into a super-highway of critically needed goods that improve lives.

There’s no question that human activity has had a profound effect on our planet. But this time-lapse video from Fast Company shows just how rapid and dramatic those changes have been.

Some scientists say our impact as a species on the Earth has ushered in a new geologic era known as the Anthropocene. Meaning ‘age of man,’ it is “defined by our own massive impact on the planet” that will have permanent effects, according to National Geographic.

In the course of one lifetime, we’ve created a complex nerve system connecting global civilization. People, energy, information and money flow around the world more easily than ever. For much of the population, these nerves bring economic opportunity, and quality of life has dramatically improved.

But a look at “A Cartography of the Anthropocene,” a series of maps produced by Globaia, shows that the benefits are not equally dispersed. Opportunity and growth reach some people and places more easily than others.

Fast Company’s video, compiled from Globaia’s maps, shows the “rapid rise of our influence on the planet since 1950.” Watch, and as the globe turns, see what the Anthropocene looks like.

When social entrepreneurs feel pressure to run inefficient businesses just so they can label themselves "nonprofit," the system is broken.

That's the dilemma faced by Saba Gul. Her startup Bliss gives Pakistani girls a monetary incentive to attend school, training them in handbag stitching and marketing their products.

In the video above and coverage by Co.Exist, Gul explains her indecision over what sort of company to incorporate:

My biggest reason for wanting to be a nonprofit was people's perception of the organization. … At the end of the day, my goal is to create impact. And I can't create impact if we don't have revenue. And I don't think there's a better way to sell your products than to build a really efficient business, which is really hard as a nonprofit.

To operate efficiently, Gul says, Bliss must get big—"scale to a million people," she says. And unless she can sell equity in her organization to investors, that'll be very hard.

Over the last few decades, the nonprofit industry and its fans persuaded much of the public that nonprofit status is proof of good intentions—and, even worse, that for-profit status is proof of bad intentions.

For nonprofits, this has turned out to be a very successful marketing campaign. But Gul's story shows how badly the world needs to smash it.

Related content: Flexible-purpose corporations stretch the meaning of charity

Presented by Jeffrey Garten at Mercy Corps

The world is not ending, and the sky is not falling. But the rise of the global South and East promises to reward the world's most innovative risk-takers.

Despite virtually all the underpinnings of the global economy shifting, we have reason to be “extremely optimistic.” To an audience at Mercy Corps, international economist and Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Garten shared a critical appraisal of the shifting world economy, noting that only two such “super-cycles” have occurred in the last 500 years: the industrial revolution and post-World War II recovery. Garten observed that today's historic transformation is shifting the engine of demand--once emanating from the U.S. and Europe, it will now be driven most strongly by emerging markets.

Ten years ago, Garten estimated, emerging markets accounted for perhaps 28 percent of the global economy. Today, it’s over 50 percent.

“This is a massive shift in the gravity of the world economy from the West to the East and the South,” said Garten. “Emerging markets, whether it’s China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, or Nigeria, are where all the locusts of demand and investment will be.”

“In the last 30 years, the middle class outside the U.S. grew from about 700 million to 1.8 billion people,” he said. In the next 30 years, the World Bank predicts it will grow to five billion.

This massive increase in the number of consumers who want the luxuries of “the West” has incredible implications for health, food, water, infrastructure and communications. Though we can’t predict the full repercussions, we know it will mean hyper-urbanization.

Every day, 180,000 people move from the country to the city in emerging markets. That means six New York cities arise every year in emerging markets.

Though hyper-urbanization may not seem like a positive change right now, he admitted, urban centers have always been the motors of global advancement and innovation. Garten’s optimism arises from his expectation that this urban growth will be the birthplace of the next great advancement for humanity, if we can harness it.

In super-cycles, explained Garten, geopolitics change drastically. After the Industrial Revolution, Europe and the U.S. changed from agrarian to manufacturing societies, with the U.S. and England running the show. After World War II, much of the industrialized world was leveled, but recovery took on a speed unseen before, and Germany and Japan joined the U.S. in running the show. In Garten's analysis, today we have an "extreme multilateral" situation where no one is running the show, and serious disagreements about the rules of the game.

“We may never again see global trade negotiations like the kind we knew. There are just too many differing views about how they should be conducted.”

“When I put all these elements together I see a world of very rapid change, very disorienting change. It’s breaking down of all the models that we used to know, with big changes...especially in the way companies are going to behave.”

In this setting of extreme volatility, Garten described the characteristics global organizations need to be competitive: a very clear purpose, set of principles and strategic vision that provide guidance through all the gray areas. Plans should be challenged every six months and constantly reevaluated.

“You have to ask yourself: Does this strategy help us be resilient and adaptable? Because like soldiers entering a war, the minute the first bullet is fired, all the plans fall by the wayside,” said Garten. At the peak of a super-cycle, "the organizational winners will be those that are...constantly envisioning new scenarios, and asking 'what if.'"

An organization must be obsessed with innovation at every level, from the janitor to the boardroom. “If I wanted to find out whether an organization is innovative, I’d probably sit down with the CEO and ask:

Tell me three things you’ve been working on, two of which are likely to fail.' If you aren’t working on anything that’s likely to fail, you’re not far enough out on that edge.

Jeffrey Garten's lecture was sponsored by Global Envision and hosted at Mercy Corps' Action Center in Portland, Oregon.

Baby formula isn’t the only way to reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission. A nipple shield could be cost-effective and healthier.

HIV infects 400,000 children each year, and breastfeeding greatly increases that possibility, according to the Science and Development Network.

If breastfeeding is too risky, is formula the best alternative? The answer might not be what you expect.

Mothers who have sore nipples or latch-on trouble already use nipple shields for breastfeeding. The improved nipple shield JustMilk was introduced at the International Development Design Summit in 2008 and aims to inactivate the HIV virus through a removable insert.

According to the Science and Development Network, “formula feeding is often unsafe, expensive and impractical, especially in developing countries, where formula-fed babies face a higher risk of malnutrition, diarrhea and other infections from water-borne disease.

The JustMilk shield remains in its initial phases and needs to be thoroughly tested. If effective, it could be lifesaving and cost-effective. Check out the video to see how the nipple shield works.

Development aid is meant to support marginalized populations. But sometimes that aid can hurt the very people it was intended to help.

The Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog reported last Monday that the World Bank is accused of promoting agricultural policies that rob communities of their land. Environmental and farm advocacy groups have charged the Bank with supporting what are known as "land grabs," in which investors are purchasing tens of millions of hectares of fertile farmland in Africa and Asia to develop plantation style commercial farming.

The World Bank sees foreign investment in agriculture as an opportunity to spur rural development. In theory, the investments are supposed to bring jobs, infrastructure and improved productivity.

But the groups, which include Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) and La Campesina, accuse it of promoting "corporate-oriented rather than people-centred" policies and laws.

"The result has often been … people forced off land they have traditionally farmed for generations,” said FOEI in a separate report.

Land grabs have serious consequences for local communities. The World Bank should invest in developing their capacity, not corporate interests.

RELATED: Invest in Farmers—Not Land Grabs

The U.S. military is targeting an unorthodox foe in the battle for political stability in Africa: climate change.

That’s the goal of a new $7.6 million joint military project with the University of Texas, focused on developing a new mapping tool to show where “vulnerability to climate change and violent conflicts intersect throughout the African continent,” according to Scientific American.

The Climate Change and African Political Stability Project (CCAPS) compiles data on civil unrest and other violent conflicts in Africa dating back to 1996. The program also “visualizes multiple dimensions of climate vulnerability and risks in a single map,” Fast.Co.Exist reports, and overlays this with data about conflicts and ongoing climate-related aid initiatives.

The result, project managers hope, will be a tool that shows how climate change causes droughts and food insecurity, which in turn can drive violent local and regional clashes over limited and dwindling resources.

The mapping tool is “a starting point for a conversation … about how we prioritize resources" Joshua Busby, project researcher and assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas, told Scientific American.

Climate change impacts can slow economic growth and damage livelihoods. Clearly violent conflict does as well.

Knowing how and where these intersect can help governments and international agencies best allocate limited resources to head off and alleviate impending disasters.

"It is not enough to say ‘Ethiopia is vulnerable’ without explaining which parts of Ethiopia are particularly vulnerable and why," states CCAPS’ research document. “Decision-makers need research that is evidence-based and detail-oriented to help them target aid in the most effective way possible.”

A look at the document’s ‘composite vulnerability’ maps (composed of both climate-related and socio-political indicators) show particularly high risk in troubled countries such as Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But even within each of these, risks vary by location, and a micro-scale understanding is essential for appropriate responses.

The military might not be on the verge of winning the war against climate change. But it’s hopeful that weapons like CCAPS will aid in the battle against its ugliest side-effects.

RELATED CONTENT: “How climate change puts the heat on governments”
“Seeking prosperity? More often than ever, there’s a map for that”

A sustainable water treatment system developed by AguaClara is delivering cheap drinking water to communities in Honduras using a power source far cheaper and more abundant than electricity: gravity.

In this podcast, AguaClara’s project coordinator Daniel Smith discusses his group’s project that provides potable water at less than .01 cent per liter, and uses simple and affordable materials available at the community level. Villages across Honduras are now drinking up and circumventing dependency on expensive and unreliable electricity sources to purify their water, thanks to AguaClara’s gravity-powered system.

Their innovation was recognized as a Tech Awards Intel Environmental Laureate for 2011, and AguaClara hopes to soon spread its impact beyond Honduras to neighboring countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Listen to the entire (28 minute) podcast interview here.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week announced a $44 million commitment with the Skoll Foundation to scale up game-changing global poverty innovations.

At the Department of State's Global Impact Economy Forum, held in Washington, D.C., Clinton called for the private sector and civil society to join her in "cracking the code on removing the obstacles that limit growth." Clinton also unveiled a new initiative piloting in Brazil, called Accelerating Market-Driven Partnerships (AMP).

"The AMP will draw on the resources of the private sector, civil society, and multilateral partners in both Brazil and the United States, including Arent Fox, Machado Associados, Grupo ABC, HP, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank Group, and Mercy Corps," said Clinton.

The pilot will bring a business eye to solving social and environmental problems in developing markets, focusing on urban areas by providing low-cost housing, offering skills training that builds capacity of local workers, and improving urban waste management systems. If successful in Brazil, other cities will benefit next from the ideas and solutions.

It is obviously important to provide humanitarian relief when people are starving because of bad government policies that undermine agricultural development or because of drought or other acts of nature. But it’s better to get ahead of the curve and to invest in new, more effective agricultural production.

Clinton noted that targeted investments could reach as many as 1.4 billion new mid-market customers with growing incomes in developing countries, which represents more than $12 trillion in spending power.

There is a market waiting to be filled in every corner of this world.

• Global Impact Economy Forum agenda and full panelist list


• Follow the conversation on Twitter with #ImpactGPI


• Sec. Clinton's remarks


• Stanford Social Innovation Review's series: At USAID, Linking Innovation and Evidence to Drive Impact


• Panelists include the Rockefeller Foundation, Morgan Stanley, the U.S. Department of Treasury, the London School of Economics, Mars Corporation, Herman Miller, the World Bank, Swiss Re, Moody’s Investors Service, Calvert Foundation, CitiGroup, the U.S. Department of Commerce, The Lemelson Foundation, Hershey’s, Kraft Foods Foundation, Mercy Corps, Virgin Unite, CISCO, Shorebank, MIT D-Lab, Vox Capital, B-Corp, Ashoka, Acumen Fund, Tides Network and many others.