Author Archives: Marc Schleifer

10 Years of Empowering Business Women in Bangladesh

Posted on 6 March, 2013 | Comments Off
Selima Ahmad with CIPE Senior Program Officer Marc Shleifer and Regional Director Andrew Wilson.

BWCCI founder Selima Ahmad with CIPE Senior Program Officer Marc Schleifer (left) and Regional Director Andrew Wilson (right).

Selima Ahmad, founder of long-time CIPE partner the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI), traveled to Washington DC this week to be honored with the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Award, established by the International Republican Institute’s Women’s Democracy Network. This award honors those who have made contributions to the advancement of women through politics and civil society around the world.

Ahmad and BWCCI certainly fit that bill, having built an organization in less than ten years from two dozen members to more than 3,000, providing training to over 1,500 women entrepreneurs to improve their business skills, and taken numerous women business owners on trade expositions to allow them to establish trade links with potential partners.

Most importantly, BWCCI has kept the focus on policy advocacy to improve the business environment for its members, to allow them to flourish and to move from microenterprises to the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) level. In particular, BWCCI has worked on the issue of access to finance for women-owned business, as well as access to marketplaces around Bangladesh.

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Posted in South Asia

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Building Women’s Chambers and Associations in South Asia

Posted on 19 February, 2013 | Comments Off

south asia women entrepreneurship symposium

Hammad Siddiqui, Deputy Country Director for CIPE’s Pakistan field office, contributed to this report.

To begin addressing the issue of why some women’s business organizations thrive while others do not, CIPE recently launched a project to build links among women’s chambers and associations in South Asia.

CIPE identified 11 organizations, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka – and for the first time reached out to groups from India and Bhutan – to participate. With the assistance of long-time partner the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI), conducted a diagnostic survey of these organizations’ governance, finances, membership, strategic planning, advocacy, services and other issues. The organizations were then invited to participate in a networking meeting held this February in Dhaka, Bangladesh. CIPE’s efforts complement a U.S. State Department program to build links among women entrepreneurs in the region, the South Asia Women Entrepreneurship Symposium.

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Posted in South Asia

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A Taxonomy of Social Entrepreneurship

Posted on 15 November, 2012 | Comments Off

A Malaria Consortium vendor sells bed nets in Mozambique. (Photo: DFID)

In a recent blog post, my colleague Molly Brister investigates the rise of social entrepreneurship, which she rightly characterizes as a phenomenon whereby local actors are able to achieve development goals or address social and economic issues when “the government may not have the capacity or ability to do so.” Having recognized the power of social entrepreneurship, many donors are eager to provide needed resources, whether financial or technical, to further these initiatives. Indeed, supporting social entrepreneurship is an attractive area for companies seeking to maximize the impact of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) dollars, as mentioned by Anna Nadgrodkiewicz in her piece on recent trends in CSR.

But in analyzing the social entrepreneurship landscape, one quickly sees that the term means different things to different groups. As Brister points out throughout her blog, the players here include “for-profit companies, nonprofits and NGOs, or even… existing resources… in government.” The landscape can be difficult to navigate, with overlapping understandings that can be difficult to unpack. To keep the conversation going, I propose a small taxonomy of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship.

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Posted in Global

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Pakistani Business Community Ready to Voice its Views on Corruption

Posted on 2 November, 2012 | Comments Off

Moin Fudda, CIPE Country Director, Zafar Bkhtawari, President ICCI, Muhammad Ali, Chairman SECP, Andrew Wilson, CIPE Regional Director, and Olaf Kellerhoff, Resident Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (left to right) exchange views on the “Role of Private Sector in Combating Corruption”

In Pakistan, private sector leaders have traditionally been largely reluctant to discuss one of the foremost impediments to the country’s economic growth – corruption. In both the press and the popular perception, the problem has typically been discussed as a product of a too-cozy nexus between the political and business elites. Meanwhile, representatives of the business community have considered the topic taboo, and as a result, have rarely conveyed their view – that in fact, by and large, far from benefiting, most in Pakistan’s private sector suffer from the high level of corruption.

Since CIPE opened its Pakistan office in 2006 and began worked with the country’s chambers of commerce, it has gradually become more feasible to raise the issue of economic policy reform, and now for the first time, this has shifted to an open discussion of corruption. Business leaders now are willing to stand up and not only talk about the costs they face because of corruption, but to begin to think about how they can be part of the solution.

On October 25 in Islamabad, CIPE and the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) organized a roundtable on “The Role of the Private Sector in Reducing Corruption,” the first meeting of its kind in Pakistan. The event featured a panel discussion among Mohammad Ali, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP); Zafar Bakhtawari, President of ICCI; Olaf Kellerhoff, Resident Representative of the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation; and top CIPE staff.

More than 75 representatives of the private sector, government agencies including the Competition Commission and the Economic Reform Unit of the Ministry of Finance, representatives of think tanks, the IFC and World Bank, and the board and staff of ICCI attended. The event also highlighted another new initiative in Pakistan – a corruption perceptions survey of young entrepreneurs called “Unpacking Corruption,” conducted by the Young Entrepreneurs’ Forum of ICCI.

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Posted in South Asia

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CIPE Pakistan Releases 2011 Activities Report

Posted on 6 August, 2012 | Comments Off

CIPE established its Pakistan field office in 2006, making a commitment to strengthening democratic and market reforms in one of the world’s most challenging countries. Relying on extensive international working with chambers of commerce, business associations, think tanks and other NGOs, CIPE sought to provide Pakistan’s private sector with the tools needed to serve as a catalyst for institutional reform.

Each year, CIPE releases a Pakistan Activities Report, highlighting the results of these efforts, and the successes and achievements of our partners. The 2011 Activities Report, which can be found here, demonstrates the encouraging impact that CIPE’s programs have begun to demonstrate.

Through our capacity-building initiatives for business associations, these organizations have realized the importance of their role in a democratic society, and have begun to take the lead in advocating for economic policy reform, and strengthening dialogue with government agencies, regulators and political parties. CIPE’s partners in the business community have become significantly more effective in such dialogue, and as a result, has become to have a positive effect on the policymaking process and the business climate.

In addition to capacity-building and policy advocacy, CIPE has worked with its partners in 2011 in areas such as corporate governance, economic journalism, and entrepreneurship development. CIPE and its partners are also becoming more active in using blogs and social media tools to advance the message of economic and democratic reform in Pakistan.

CIPE and its partners look forward to continued successes in Pakistan in 2012.

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Posted in South Asia

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Women empowering women in Bangladesh

Posted on 10 March, 2011 | Comments Off

Since 2006, CIPE has supported the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI), as it has grown into the leading voice of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. From humble beginnings in 2001, the organization now has 2,500 members across the country, served by a main office in Dhaka and several regional branch offices.

In the past, barely one percent of women entrepreneurs and small businesses and were able to get bank loans, according to BWCCI’s research. Now, after BWCCI’s extensive advocacy with the Central Bank of Bangladesh, approximately $30 million has been allocated specifically for loans to women entrepreneurs, without collateral and at low interest rates. To date, nearly $23 million has been provided to over 3,000 women entrepreneurs, helping to create around 20,000 new jobs. In addition, all banks in Bangladesh must establish dedicated desks for women entrepreneurs, and banks must make at least five percent of their SME finance loans to women, according to Central Bank instructions.

Another tool that BWCCI has used in its work with CIPE is the “national business agenda,” a process of identifying and prioritizing the concerns of entrepreneurs, and proposing concrete steps and policy solutions needed to improve the business climate. In particular, one of BWCCI’s national business agendas, in 2009, continued to focus on access to credit as a particularly acute barrier to business for women.

In the video clip that follows, Selima Ahmad, President of BWCCI, discusses these issues in more detail, and shares the stories of several of her organization’s successes –  women empowering women entrepreneurs in one of the world’s poorest countries to grow their small businesses, help support their families, and create jobs for others.

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Posted in South Asia

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CIPE launches Responsible Business Guide in Pakistan

Posted on 23 November, 2010 | Comments Off

Panelists at the Responsible Business Guide launch in Lahore (Photo: CIPE)

On November 11, in Lahore, Pakistan, CIPE, the Responsible Business Initiative (RBI), and the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) launched a new tool to encourage greater transparency, accountability and integrity in Pakistan’s companies – the Responsible Business Guide: A Toolkit for Winning Companies. The Guide is a new element in CIPE’s emerging focus on corporate citizenship, which represents a move from philanthropy and corporate social responsibility – often viewed as “giving back” to the community – to a deeper understanding of the commitment of companies to society.

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Posted in South Asia

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