Development Innovation Ventures Newsletter
May 2022
 A market vendor in Kenya was able to grow her business with support from Village Enterprise, whose work was funded through a Development Impact Bond managed by Instiglio. ©Instiglio
USAID’s First Development Impact Bond Shows Promising Results
Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) is pleased to share that a development impact bond (DIB) designed and managed by Instiglio, a Stage 2 grantee, successfully supported the scale-up of Village Enterprise’s graduation program, reducing poverty for 95,000 people in Kenya and Uganda. A DIB is a relatively new form of results-based financing in which investors provide upfront capital for an intervention run by a service provider—in this case, Village Enterprise—to implement their poverty graduation program. Outcome payers make payments based on specific, closely measured results. In this DIB, outcome payers included USAID/DIV, the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and an anonymous donor. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted by independent evaluator IDinsight verified the results, which showed meaningful and statistically significant increases in household consumption and assets despite the COVID-19 pandemic. These results add to the substantial evidence base around the cost-effectiveness of the graduation model to improve people’s welfare. As USAID’s first venture into DIBs, this award offers broad lessons about the potential for results-based financing to increase the impact of global development programs. Learn more in IDInsight’s Report and this article from Devex.
New DIV Awards to the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) Will Study an Innovative Job Seeking Service and Develop a New App to Support Frontline Workers
In March, DIV awarded two grants to a new USAID partner, the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP).
With a Stage 1 grant, CERP will pilot a mobile app that uses behavior change techniques to train frontline workers to provide important information to new mothers and their families in an accessible and sensitive way. Read more.
With an Evidence grant, CERP will conduct an RCT to generate evidence around a job matching service that doesn’t rely on scarce internet access. Read more.
In March, USAID signed a memorandum of understanding with France’s Fund for Innovation in Development (FID) to collaborate in support of global innovators and researchers and improve the lives of more people around the world. DIV and FID will work together to enhance the quality of their respective grant portfolios and provide thought leadership on the use of innovation and evidence in donor programming. FID is an initiative of the French government to support innovation that contributes to reducing global poverty and inequality. By providing flexible grant funding, FID—like DIV—enables innovators and researchers to test new ideas, build rigorous evidence of what works, and scale the highest-impact and most cost-effective solutions. Together, FID and DIV hope to extend the impact of their portfolios and encourage the global community to invest in more evidence-based and cost-effective development solutions.
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DIV Innovator Spotlight
Givewell's $64.7 Million Award to Evidence Action Will Double the Number of People Reached by Dispensers for Safe Water
Earlier this month, Evidence Action, a former DIV grantee, announced that Open Philanthropy committed up to $64.7 million to double the reach of Dispensers for Safe Water. This significant new investment—recommended by GiveWell—will enable Evidence Action, which received Stage 3 funding in 2012, to reach a total of nine million people, more than double their current reach of four million across Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi. More than ten percent of Uganda’s population and more than 15 percent of Malawi’s will have access to safe water, in addition to more than two million people currently served in Kenya. This investment comes after a recent meta-analysis by DIV Scientific Director Michael Kremer and others showed that water treatment reduces the odds of mortality from all causes of children under five by around 25 percent. Free, reliable access to safe water is proven to reduce childhood illnesses and deaths from diarrheal disease. Dispensers for Safe Water is among the most cost-effective ways to improve water treatment. Read more.
SparkMeter Raises $10 Million
Last month, former DIV grantee SparkMeter announced a $10 million raise from Accurant International, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Clean Energy Ventures. SparkMeter will use this funding to advance its grid management technology, which uses data to help utilities optimize existing power infrastructure. With a 2018 DIV Stage 2 grant, Sparkmeter increased access to smart grid technology in emerging markets and less developed countries. Read more.
Apollo Agriculture Raises $40 Million
In March, former DIV grantee Apollo Agriculture received a $40 million Series B equity investment led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. This Kenya-based agritech company helps farmers access high-quality farm inputs, financing, and markets by using satellite imagery of farms and artificial intelligence to rate the creditworthiness of farmers. It plans to use the new funds to refine its technology, deliver more products and services to farmers that deliver more value per acre of land, and seek new growth opportunities in East and West Africa. With a 2017 DIV Stage 2 grant and support from USAID’s Feed the Future initiative, Apollo expanded its data science team and bolstered its farm-level data collection to identify which data are most predictive of credit repayment behavior and powering customized agronomic advice. Read more.
To learn more about DIV’s portfolio and get the latest news from DIV and its grantees, visit divportal.usaid.gov.
DIV is accepting applications! Please visit www.usaid.gov/div to learn more and apply.
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