- Agriculture and Food Security
- Democracy, Human Rights and Governance
- Economic Growth and Trade
- Education
- Environment and Global Climate Change
- Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment
- Global Health
- Science, Technology and Innovation
- Development Innovation Ventures
- Data & Analytics for Development
- Frontiers in Development
- Grand Challenges for Development
- Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN)
- International Research & Science Programs
- LAUNCH
- Leveraging Universities
- Mobile Solutions
- Science at USAID
- Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention
- Water and Sanitation
- Working in Crises and Conflict
DIV is supporting teams of young entrepreneurs, world-class development economists, public-private partnerships, international NGOs, and others around the developing world. Their work spans more than 19 countries and 8 sectors.
AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY
Protecting farmers’ incomes through advances in grain storage
$88,400 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Afghanistan
Purdue University will jumpstart a private sector supply chain in Afghanistan for hermetic grain storage bags in order to help farmers avoid the storage loss of grains and grain legumes. Purdue’s hermetic grain storage technology is a triple layer bag composed of two inner liners and an outer sack of woven polypropylene, which can almost eliminate grain storage losses from insects and can greatly reduce losses from mold and mildew.
Click here to read the full project description.
An Enriching Experiment: Harnessing nitrogen from the air to improve soil fertility
$99,854 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Ethiopia
Close on the heels of the 2011 food security crisis in the Horn of Africa, a new startup will pilot an alternative way to produce fertilizer using a native species of algae in Ethiopia. Thin Air Nitrogen Solutions, in partnership with Ethiopia's Hawassa University, will test the cost of using the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria to fertilize common crops. The on-farm approach of growing cyanobacteria intensively in ponds and harvesting the culture for use on any crop sidesteps the need for energy-intensive production and transportation infrastructure to get fertilizers to farmers’ fields.
Click here to read the full project description.
Text for tips: Increasing farmers’ crop yields via an SMS-based knowledge exchange with agricultural extension specialists
$96,394 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Kenya
Harvard researchers are teaming up with Mumias Sugar Company, the largest sugar producer in Kenya, to develop, implement, and rigorously evaluate an innovative agricultural extension program that directly reaches out to farmers via mobile phones. The program will use a randomized control trial to test the impacts of using text messages and voicemails to diffuse information, including sharing novel best practices and notifying farmers at optimal planting and harvesting times given the rains.
Click here to read the full project description.
Increasing fertilizer adoption by Kenyan farmers through an innovative pricing scheme
$99,828 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Kenya
Researchers will use a randomized control trial to rigorously evaluate an innovative pricing scheme to encourage Kenyan farmers to use fertilizer to increase crop yields. The pricing scheme will offer farmers small, time-limited discounts (15%) on fertilizer right after harvest to encourage purchasing fertilizer while farmers have funds readily available, rather than waiting until the next planting season when their cash reserves have depleted.
Click here to read the full project description.
Creative cash for crops: testing crop-based financial instruments to open credit to farmers
$230,145 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Sierra Leone
Poor farmers are often forced to sell their crops at harvest time, when prices are lowest, because they need immediate income and lack access to crop storage. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Innovations for Poverty Action will test a crop-based lending model in which private banks store farmers' crops at the time of harvest as collateral and give loans to the farmers, with the goal of reducing the damaging effects of price seasonality.
Click here to read the full project description.
DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND GOVERNANCE
Caught on camera: testing how election fraud monitoring might change a cheater's calculus
$99,992 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Afghanistan
A team from the University of California, San Diego, will use a randomized control trial to measure the effectiveness of an election monitoring approach in reducing electoral fraud in Afghanistan. The study will evaluate how candidates’ and election officials’ behavior would react to the knowledge that their vote counts would be photographed.
Click here to read the full project description.
Improving Governance and Public Service Delivery with Voter Information Campaigns In Delhi
$200,000 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
Evidence suggests that voter information campaigns have a dramatic impact on voters' choices, but do they influence politicians' behavior? The urban poor make up a large proportion of India’s voting population, but like in many developing country democracies, they have not translated their potential political weight into improved public service delivery and other benefits. Researchers will use a randomized control trial to assess how politicians adjust their spending in wards where information is circulated to voters, and will measure whether residents in the treatment groups had fewer days lost to sickness.
Click here to read the full project description.
The right to vote right: testing voter education campaigns in India
$98,957 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | India
Can sharing information about the qualifications of incumbent candidates improve the quality of elected politicians? Researchers run a randomized control trial in India to test whether giving voters report cards with incumbents’ background information and past performance reviews will impact electoral outcomes.
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND TRADE
Settling the score: A psychometric assessment that unlocks credit to entrepreneurs in the Muslim world
$438,000 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Egypt
Can a psychometric exam replace the traditional credit check? For many small and medium-sized businesses in the developing world, having an easier way to demonstrate their creditworthiness would remove their most significant barrier to expansion. The Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, founded by Harvard University researchers, has pioneered an automated tool examining a loan applicant's intelligence, business acumen, honesty and psychological profile to predict risk and future earnings potential. Over the last 4 years in 7 countries across Latin America and Africa, the tool was able to predict default as well as or better than credit scoring models used in developed countries with corporate clients.
Click here to read the full project description.
An opportunity InSight: Mobile accounting and financial inclusion in emerging markets
$100,000 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | India
Around the world, it's a common story: small-business owners want access to more credit, but do not have the resources to complete traditional credit checks -- while lenders find it too expensive and risky to lend to them without this information. Award-winning social enterprise InVenture is piloting an SMS-based tool that will both allow small business owners to track financial data quickly and easily, and facilitate lenders’ assessments of their creditworthiness and management of their loan repayment.
Click here to read the full project description.
An optical solution: envisioning affordable eye care for all
$585,300 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
The global price tag for vision loss is estimated at $3 trillion per year. 773 million people around the world live with unaided vision impairment, 77% of whom could have their sight restored with a pair of eyeglasses. VisionSpring will subsidize the sales of eyeglasses and eye exams to the poorest citizens in India using revenue from sales to a higher income demographic.
Click here to read the full project description.
Ghana National Apprenticeship Program Impact Evaluation: Effort, Incentives and Returns
$474,033 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Ghana
The National Apprenticeship Program in Ghana will promote apprenticeship training to harness the knowledge and experience of firms and entrepreneurs to provide relevant skills to high levels of unemployed youth in Ghana. The program is designed to provide credible evidence on (1) the efficacy of an innovative apprenticeship training program in improving employment, earnings, and other labor market outcomes for youth and (2) the additional returns associated with well-targeted and benchmarked financial and other incentives for trainers.
Trust-building tech: Unlocking credit for African entrepreneurs and small businesses through low-cost technology
$360,195 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Kenya
Tavneet Suri (MIT) and William Jack (Georgetown University) will work with partners to implement and rigorously evaluate a trade credit product for small-scale entrepreneurs in Kenya. The credit product will use a new mobile phone-based money transfer system to lower the transaction costs of lending and borrowing, and the study will assess changes in creditors and retailers’ profits, employment numbers, transaction costs, and repayment times.
Click here to read the full project description.
Tech and training? Evaluating the role of training programs in new mobile banking solutions for microsaving
$293,146 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Mozambique
In collaboration with the Mozambique’s largest cell operator Carteira Movel, researchers from the Faculdade de Economla da Unlversidade Nova de Lisboa will first evaluate the role of mobile banking in facilitating savings by providing access to interest-accruing savings accounts with an automatic savings commitment device. By overlaying a randomized business training course to the previous intervention, it will then study the impact of a financial training program aimed at managing micro-savings and building long-term financial assets for their businesses.
How to Make Better Businesses: Experimental Evidence of the Components of Entrepreneurship
$93,612 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Uganda
As entrepreneurship captures the interest of policy makers looking to stimulate development success, business skills training has grown in popularity. Little is known about what makes a good entrepreneur, though, and there is no consensus on how those skills may be taught. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) will conduct a rigorous test of the components of being a successful entrepreneur, including whether and how to teach these components. This project is the first comprehensive test of the black box of entrepreneurship training and will provide critical evidence of what works and what doesn’t for improving the success of businesses in developing countries. The results will be presented around the world and to all relevant Ugandan and international parties.
EDUCATION
Maximizing the development impact of migrant remittances
$96,409 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | The Philippines
In 2009, migrant workers sent $307 billion to their homes around the world—an amount roughly two-and-a-half times larger than foreign aid flows. Researchers will pilot a financial innovation called EduPay and use a randomized control trial to rigorously test its impact. This new program will allow overseas Filipinos to directly pay educational institutions in the Philippines without channeling the funds through a relative or other “trustee.” The system allows sponsors to monitor the performance (i.e. grades and attendance) of the sponsored student.
Smoothing the Costs of Education: Microsavings in Ugandan Primary Schools
$181,537 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Uganda
Uganda's primary school enrolment rates have increased dramatically as a result of the country's policy of Universal Primary Education. Undermining this success, however, is the fact that 70% of children drop out before completing elementary school. The majority of drop outs and their families cite financial concerns as the main reason for discontinuing their education. Innovation for Poverty Action is conducting research using a “Super Savers Program” strategy to present students with a tool to help them save for school fees, while gaining a more precise understanding of the challenges to high student retention.
ENERGY
A bright answer: providing electricity to rural India through renewable micro grids
$300,000 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
DIV is supporting Mera Gao Micro Grid Power (MGP) with a grant to construct and operate approximately 40 new village-level micro grid lighting facilities and evaluate their impact on school enrollment, health, and household income. Award-winning MGP provides its customers with more light points running for more hours each day.
Click here to read the full project description.
The "Netflix" electricity model: Charging and swapping batteries in Tanzania
$100,000 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Tanzania
EGG-energy is a private venture that bridges the “last mile” power distribution gap to bring affordable, reliable and clean energy with a business model that has won numerous awards and fellowships. In rural and peri-urban areas, EGG-energy charges small, lead-acid batteries from the national power grid or its own solar charging stations, and rents them out to individual and institutional customers. Each battery provides power for 3-5 nights.
Click here to read the full project description.
Affordable Access to Energy for All: Innovative Financing for Solar Systems
$1,020,126 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Uganda
Using a two-pronged approach that combines innovative solar technology with user-friendly financing, award-winning social enterprise, d.light design, will trial a product that addresses one of the major barriers for potential solar energy customers in Uganda: financing. Newly designed solar models and metering systems will deliver easy-to-use, high quality, and upgradeable electricity systems with a flexible, pay-as-you-go finance model to adapt to household needs.
Click here to read the full project description.
Solar storage: creating clean energy storage systems for developing world contexts
$100,000 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Multi
SiGNa Chemistry will develop a power system with a clean and safe energy storage solution tailored to developing country contexts. The system will operate at one-sixth the cost, weight, and volume of existing battery technologies, increasing the efficiency of charging everything from cellphones to vaccine refrigerators around the world.
Click here to read the full project description.
Sun spotlight: providing solar lighting to Uganda's rural cooperatives
$98,360 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Uganda
In Uganda's least electrified district of Kalangala, member owned cooperatives are forming to help get the lights on with micro-power solar LED lanterns. Lighting Rural Uganda with Solar (LRUS), a Ugandan NGO,will work through these existing member coop structures to provide households retail credit for purchasing these lanterns, allowing small businesses to operate longer and children to complete schoolwork after dark.
Click here to read the full project description.
ENVIRONMENT AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Saving energy and money: Testing energy audits to remove greenhouse gas emissions in India
$185,533 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
Little is known about which industrial investments in energy-efficiency can cut both emissions and costs, and rapidly growing economies often fail to invest. With a randomized control trial spanning 400 textile and chemical plants in India’s industrial region, the results of the study will shed new light on the way firms make decisions about energy efficiency. The study will calculate the financial returns to the plant of the adoption of energy-saving approaches to compel companies to adopt those that save money, too.
Click here to read the full project description.
GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
Solar Sister: A Women's Network to Improve Clean Energy
$1,000,000 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania | Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment | Environment & Global Climate Change
Solar Sister is scaling a high impact program that will bring solar lighting and mobile phone charging technologies to 1.6 million Africans in Uganda, Tanzania, and the newly formed nation of South Sudan, where 50% of the population uses firewood or grass as the primary source of lighting and 27% have no lighting at all. Through the DIV Stage 2 funding, Solar Sister will recruit, train and launch 3,000 Solar Sister Entrepreneurs (SSEs) who will sell 315,000 solar lights and mobile phone chargers to provide clean energy services across East Africa.
GLOBAL HEALTH
The life-saving balloon: developing an affordable postpartum hemorrhage treatment to save mothers' lives
$99,793 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Ghana
DIV is supporting the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health’s (PATH) development of a safe, simple, affordable balloon tamponade to help stop postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. Balloon tamponades can save a woman’s life 76% to 100% of the time, depending on the design, but current models are prohibitively expensive for widespread use in developing countries.
Click here to read the full project description and read the press release here.
Scaling CommCare to Deliver Community Impact
$996,424 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
After a successful launch as a Stage 1 project, Dimagi's CommCare is poised to expand. CommCare technologies provide mobile tools for community health workers (CHW) encouraging them to enroll all eligible clients, to conduct more timely visits to patients, and to correctly follow procedures and clinical protocols. CommCare also offers its government and health NGO clients a radically new monitoring tool that collects actionable data for performance improvement. Dimagi’s objective is to ensure that beneficiaries, CHWs, and managers all have the right information, at the right time, in the right place.
Click here to read the full project description and read more about Dimagi and DIV here.
Health help in hand: testing a cell phone-based aid for community health workers and data-gathering platform
$99,624 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | India
Dimagi, a Charlestown, MA-based technology company, has developed an open source mobile and cloud-based platform, CommCare, that will use the growing ubiquity of mobile phones to provide comprehensive support and data collection capabilities to health workers. CommCare will allow any community health organization to quickly create and customize health applications and download them onto the phones of community health workers for free use.
Click here to read the full project description.
Thumbs up: monitoring health worker attendance with fingerprint recognition technology
$172,679 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
To reduce health worker absenteeism, the State Government of Karnataka, Harvard, and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia at the Institute for Financial Management and Research, in Chennai, will use smart phones to capture thumb impressions of health staff as a monitor of daily attendance. The project will also facilitate faster response to emerging health threats by transmitting real time epidemiological data from rural areas to state-level health authorities.
Click here to read the full project description.
Fingerprinting in the Fight against Tuberculosis
$897,324 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | India
Patient lapses in first-line tuberculosis treatment are a key cause of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB)s, which could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths in the next five years. OperationASHA will test whether a biometric identification system known as eDOTS, which registers the presence of patients and staff at treatment centers through fingerprints, can prevent lapses in treatment.and the occurrence of MDR-TB.
Click here to read the full project description.
Using Performance-Based Incentives to Fight Tuberculosis in Slums
$75,103 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | India
Counselors often play a critical role in improving the access of TB treatment in remote communities, but several studies have shown that attendance and commitment of health workers are often very low in the government health and education system in remote places. This project will study the impact of providing health workers with performance based incentives on the case detection of TB and the treatment outcomes of patients in remote areas.
Click here to read the full project description.
Putting passengers in the driver’s seat: Preventing road traffic deaths through a public service campaign
$291,154 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Kenya
In the next 20 years, Africa’s deaths from road accidents are set to be double those from malaria, and already cost the African continent $10 billion annually. A pair of Georgetown researchers will test whether encouraging passengers to chide dangerous drivers will help reduce the prevalence of road traffic accidents. The project will use simple messaging on stickers placed in the cabins of Kenya's notoriously dangerous minibuses to encourage passengers to “Speak up!” against dangerous driving.
Click here to read the full project description and read more about the story here.
Save mothers' lives for less: a self-test that detects a leading cause of maternal mortality for a fraction of the price
$100,000 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Nepal
Using DIV's grant and leveraging over $518,000 in other funding, Jhpiego is developing an affordable, reliable self-test to detect pre-eclampsia among pregnant women. Pre-eclampsia and its more serious progression, eclampsia, are the second leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide. Current tests are too costly for poor women and involve lab work or multiple trips to the health center while this technology will use a special pen that can cheaply test for pre-eclampsia in the community.
Click here to read the full project description.
Improving Health Service Delivery Through Community Monitoring and Non-Financial Awards
$432,258 I Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Sierra Leone
Researchers from Innovations for Poverty Action will examine how two types of social accountability interventions, non-financial incentives and community monitoring, can improve service delivery in the country’s public health sector. The study aims to rigorously evaluate the relative effectiveness and the potential for scale-up of these two non-financial incentive mechanisms using a randomized controlled trial.
Zambia's National Field Experiment: Recruiting and Compensating Community Health Workers
$99,032 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Zambia
One of the major management challenges facing national governments and health NGOs with community health worker programs is setting the right incentives to maximize performance. As part of a series of studies by Innovations for Poverty Action and the Government of Zambia, researchers will investigate how different models for target-setting affects community health workers’ motivation; whether having specific goals tailored to individual circumstances can improve performance; and whether the identity of who sets the goal (the Government or the health workers themselves) matters.
Click here to view the full project description.
MULTI-SECTOR
Scaling biochar: Investing in soils, improving livelihoods and sequestering carbon
$99,952 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Agriculture & Food Security; Environment & Global Climate Change | Kenya
In a continent where food security is a top concern and 70% of the population works in agriculture, getting the most out of degraded soil is a must. Biochar is a charcoal dust that, when added to soil, can reverse soil fertility decline, improve crop yields, and improve plant response to fertilizer. The distribution network for biochar is diffuse and difficult to build up, so researchers will test whether it is most expedient for farmers to produce and apply the biochar themselves, by burning crop waste in a low-cost kiln.
Click here to read the full project description.
"Innovative Bicycle:" Engineering next generation bicycle components for developing country consumers
$100,000 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Global Health; Environment & Global Climate Change | Kenya
Startup social enterprise Baisikeli Ugunduzi (“innovative bicycle”) has invented a product to help rid cyclists of one chronic headache—the flat tire. The new bicycle tube replaces the traditional models with a flexible, solid design that lasts for up to five years and can be fitted to any size of bicycle. Through strong relationships with Kenyan bike taxi unions and bicycle taxi drivers, Baisikeli Ugunduzi will continue to develop quality, affordable bicycle components.
Click here to read the full project description.
Potential Energy: Fueling the Cookstoves Market in East Africa
$1,500,000 | Stage 2: Testing at Scale | Darfur & Ethiopia | Environment & Global Climate Change; Global Health; Water & Sanitation
Potential Energy’s high efficiency stove, developed as part of the Berkeley Darfur Stoves Project, is the product of extensive market-testing and end-user feedback. With DIV support, PE and partners will assess the group’s impact and the relative effectiveness of the flexible financing options, pricing models, and marketing strategies it pursues.
Click here to read the full project description.
WATER & SANITATION
The Sanergy Solution: Building sustainable sanitation in urban slums
$99,840 | Stage 1: Proof of Concept | Environment & Global Climate Change; Global Health | Kenya
Sanergy, the award-winning social enterprise, is building and franchising a dense network of 60 low-cost latrines to slum residents, collecting the waste daily, and processing it as fertilizer and biogas. Designed by MIT engineers and architects, the low-cost, modular hygienic latrines can be assembled in one day. The sanitation centers are franchised to local entrepreneurs and local youth groups. Revenue from the organic fertilizer and biogas energy add to the model's profitability.
Click here to read the full project description or read the Sanergy story here.
WORKING IN CRISES AND CONFLICT
Last updated: May 15, 2013
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