Blog - Center for International Private Enterprise

Using Technology to Strengthen Civil Society in Cambodia

This year Heritage Foundation ranked Cambodia as 112th or “mostly unfree” in its 2016 Index of Economic Freedom. Though Cambodia’s management of public finances and trade have become notably more open and transparent, deep institutional and systemic challenges remain, in part due...

What Does “Intersectionality” Mean for International Development?

By Hanna Pioske The word “intersectionality” is thrown around a lot these days. Political candidates use intersectional rhetoric in their campaigns, and organization after organization publish reports on the benefits of creating intersectional programming. Everyone seems to be using the...

Associations Must Innovate to Survive Digital Disruption

Digital disruption is turning the world on its head, and presenting opportunities as well as threats, to associations, chambers, societies, non-profits, and other membership organizations. As relationships develop online and social media opens up new ways to be part of many communities, many associa...

What Good is Economics as a Science, if Not Based on Field Studies?

By Dr. Reem Abdel Haliem This post originally appeared in Arabic on the CIPE Arabia blog. I currently work with CIPE partner the Federation of Economic Development Associations (FEDA) on a study to bring Egypt’s informal sector into the formal one. Since there are number of studies on this to...

Safety First: Secure Communications and Storage Tools for Reducing Risks

What makes CIPE’s programs stand out is the caliber of our partners. From developing the first ever local business agendas in Ukraine, sparking economic policy debates for the first time in Nepal, to leading the private sector cooperate with local governments and security forces to combat ins...

The Tunisian Business Community: Still Working to Keep Tunisia’s Democracy on Track

By Ali Ayadi, Pam Beecroft, and Brenna Curti In 2015, Tunisia’s business community, government and civil society worked together to overcome a series of political and security crises that almost derailed their grand democracy experiment, and won a Nobel Prize for their efforts. Now it is the ...

Debate on Taxation in Pakistan: Reforms Move to the Next Level

Pakistan’s overall tax-to-GDP ratio has been hovering around 10 per cent for the past decade, which is approximately five per cent lower than the average of comparable economies. Despite a large tax base available in all provinces, they collectively contribute only seven per cent in overall r...

Empowering Women: Good for Business

Embed from Getty Images When I was born in Taiwan, my grandma commented “such a shame that she is not a boy!” A preference for boys was prevalent at that time—and to some extent continues today. My uncle and aunt gave up on producing a boy only after ending up with five daughters. ...

Supporting a Technology-Enabled Advocacy Effort for Nigerian Women

One of the exciting initiatives I’m leading here at CIPE is to support our partners become better equipped with low-cost online or mobile tools that could improve their operations or programs. Our network of partners do tremendous work – whether that’s developing business and leaders...

CIPE Arabia: Expert Interview with Dr. Ahmed Fikry Abdel Wahab

This post originally appeared at CIPE-Arabia in Arabic. In a brief interview with CIPE-Arabia, Dr. Ahmed Fikry Abdel Wahab shared some of his thoughts on the pervasive informal sector in Egypt. His concerns center on the potentially negative consequences a large informal sector has on competitiv...