April 29, 2009

Anderson Presents on Public-Private Alliances at USAID Conference in Jordan

ACDI/VOCA-Egypt Country Representative Douglas Anderson presented at USAID’s Driving Growth Through Innovation and Enterprise Development conference held April 28-29 in Jordan. Anderson participated as a guest speaker in a panel discussion on public-private sector alliances and spoke about the successes and lessons learned from ACDI/VOCA's ongoing Alliance for Progress in Egyptian Horticulture program. The event was sponsored by the USAID/Jordan mission for regional implementers, development practitioners and businesses. It focused on four primary themes: making businesses more competitive, building effective alliances, tourism and “greening” a business.

Joined by Dave Besch, the regional GDA officer for USAID and Peter Boone of Carana Corporation, Anderson presented on ACDI/VOCA's experience implementing a Global Development Alliance (GDA) with USAID and H.J. Heinz in Egypt. The five-year, $7 million USAID-funded initiative leverages additional financial support from the Egyptian Industrial Modernisation Centre and actively facilitates the programmatic engagement of many other commercial entities including Agrimatco, Syngenta, and a host of Egyptian processors and buyers.

The alliance facilitates a sustainable, profitable future in agriculture for thousands of smallholder Egyptian farmers through strengthening the technical ability, organizational capacity and market linkages that will enable them to meet the industry's increasingly demanding quality and quantity requirements. Production and marketing assistance is provided to farmers primarily through a tiered, highly specialized training program that provides practical, market-based recommendations and draws on the participation of technical experts from ACDI/VOCA and Heinz. The Alliance also engages regularly with other key stakeholders in the horticultural value chain, from seed companies and pesticide applicators, to greenhouse nurseries, to processors and other buyers both domestic and international.

To learn more about the program, click here.