SSG Advisors is piloting the Agricultural Fast Track - a project preparation fund - for USAID/Bureau for Food Security, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and SIDA. The $25 million Agricultural Fast Track Fund was announced May 9th at the World Economic Forum in South Africa by Rajiv Shah, Administrator of USAID, as well as Donald Kaberuka of the AfDB and Gunilla Carlsson of SIDA. SSG is piloting the fund in 6 countries across East and West Africa. Please read USAID's press release for more or watch the video about the Fast Track here. 

As part of the new USAID/PREPARED project, SSG Advisors is preparing a 5-country Rapid Partnership Appraisal and Strategy, which will identify high priority regional partnership opportunities in five countries in East Africa.

USAID has published an article based on the Indonesia fieldwork of SSG Advisors MBA Fellow, Hanna Adeyema, in its most recent edition of Frontlines. Please click here to read.

For the USAID/ProMedia Program, SSG Advisors Senior Associates Barbara Felitti and Chris Cavanaugh recently completed a feasibility study of the Multimedia Education Center, which analyzed existing organizational capacity and pathways for institutional sustainability.

SSG Advisors, in collaboration with USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, hosted a one-day workshop in San Salvador to share learning and experiences in supermarket PPPs across the region.  The workshop brought together more than 35 supermarket representatives, USAID staff, implementing partners and host government institutions to share their partnership experiences, distill best practices and propose pathways for future collaboration. 

For the last 18 months, SSG Advisors has been supporting USAID/Africa Bureau to develop and deepen learning regarding CVE through a combination of training, event participation, expert analysis and the development of a low-bandwidth online Community of Practice.  The project brings together USAID staff, implementing partners, host government staff and civil society representatives to exchange evidence-based approaches to effective CVE programming in the development sphere.

With the USAID/Bureau for Food Security, SSG Advisors recently completed field surveys of agriculture infrastructure investment opportunities in six New Alliance countries (Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania).  We are reviewing nearly 200 high-impact agriculture infrastructure investment projects, developing selection criteria and creating an investment pipeline for the Agriculture Fast Track Fund, which will be housed at the African Development Bank and supported by USAID, SIDA and other donors. 

For USAID/IDEA, SSG is currently developing a new toolkit for alliance-builders that will foster peer-to-peer exchange of best practices in partnerships.  Using a unique demand-driven approach, our team is conducting extensive outreach to USAID partnership specialists worldwide in order to draw from USAID's rich experience in public-private partnership development and identify key field needs.  These interviews are yielding an extensive collection of practical examples and insights into alliance-building, and they will prove to be a valuable resource for USAID/IDEA.

SSG's Deputy Director, Tom Buck, recently joined the ECOFISH Partnership Specialist, Lawrence Ang, in the Philippines to begin implementing the ECOFISH Community Partnership Strategy, designed to facilitate community to partnerships in select fishing communities across the country.