BEAM Grab the Mic webinar
Date: 9th December 2024
Speakers:
Renske Aarnoudse, Senior Programme Manager - IDH
Lindi Hlanze, Deputy Director, Insights, Gatsby Africa
Discussants:
Md. Rubaiyath Sarwar, Managing Director, Innovision Consulting
Jodie Thorpe, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies
Moderated by Dave Boselie, Director Corporate M&E, IDH
Watch the webinar
How can a shift to fairer and more sustainable commodities such as cocoa or cotton be achieved? In this webinar, IDH and Gatsby Africa discussed their evolving strategies for sector transformation.
The potentially broad societal benefits of sector transformation involves a complex and uncertain journey. It requires deep structural, relational and transformational changes that take longer than typical market systems development programmes allow. It is accompanied by a high risk of failure.
Between them, IDH and Gatsby have many decades of work in African and global commodity sectors. The evolution of their strategies towards sector transformation reflects accumulated successes, failures and lessons learned.
Yet, as identified in the recent evaluation of IDH’s corporate portfolio, there is a need for such strategies to identify and influence the underlying conditions that hold the system in place.
Based on the evaluation of IDH’s portfolio, as well as this accumulated learning, the speakers:
- Shared experiences and challenges of working systemically at the level of global, regional and national commodity sectors towards inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth
- Explored the outlook, role and capacities required of private sector development organisations, and their funders, in order to work in this way
This was followed by the Discussants' responses to the presentations after which there was an open Q&A.
Related reading
- Navigating systemic market transformation: mid-term review of IDH 2021-2025
- Some market systems successes but no sector transformation: lessons from Gatsby Africa’s Tanzania Cotton Sector Development Programme