Publication: Technoserve : Mozambique Case Study
Loading...
Published
2014
ISSN
Date
2014-09-12
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The innovative approaches and methods that Technoserve Mozambique (TnsMz) has pioneered have become best practice templates for other Tns country operations and, indeed, best practice templates within Mozambique itself, where TnsMz's successes in the cashew, banana, and poultry industries are notably successful. Tns offers no centralized facilities for practicing and refining business skills, but rather serves its clients where one do business, in the rural areas where crops and animals grow. However, it frequently creates partnerships with industry leaders using sites to demonstrate and or train new market entrants in best practices for processing, marketing, logistic management, and quality control. Its programs are designed to stimulate investment, job creation, and local economic activity within commodity-oriented agribusiness sectors, which typically afford only thin profit margins. TnsMz provides incentives in the form of grants or matching grants to change behavior and to introduce new technologies within farm-to-market chains. In this context, this report presents summary, background and context, strategic vision, mission, and targets, TnsMz's distinctive features, brand, and market position, approach to incubation, business model, staffing, network partners, current portfolio strategies, achievements, critical success factors, lessons learned and implications for agribusiness incubators, and future goals.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2014. Technoserve : Mozambique Case Study. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20111 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Chile : Fostering Technology Transfer and Commercialization(Washington, DC, 2009-01)Chile is an economy rich in natural resources and their efficient exploitation has proved the right strategy to grow successfully over the last few decades. More recently, in the broader context of increasing globalization and competitive pressures, it has chosen as its main development driver the contribution that arises from innovation and the adoption of higher levels of technology to enhance productivity growth and to add to national competitiveness. There is strong public commitment to increase funding to stimulate innovation, but improvements in the technology transfer and commercialization system will not only involve an increase in funding but also changes in incentives, funding reallocations and institutional building. This report responds to a request by the CNIC (National Innovation Council for Competitiveness - Consejo Nacional de Innovacion para la Competitividad), through its Secretariat, to review Chile´s knowledge/technology transfer and commercialization system and identify practical steps to accelerate the development of an effective and dynamic system. The overall objective is to expand the number of firms in Chile that use knowledge as its main competitive strategy. The remainder of the report is structured as follows. Chapter two conducts a diagnostic of Chile's current system, and chapter three provides recommendations to upgrade technology transfer and commercialization practices and incentives in Chile considering its current endowments and lessons learned from international reference models. Chapter four summarizes the conclusions of the review.Publication Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-05)Many countries are convinced that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) should be an important component of their growth strategy. To encourage FDI, they have improved their business climates, developed various guarantees for investors, and offered incentives. In the real world, Investment Promotion Intermediaries (IPIs) face tight budget and human resource constraints. Allocating scarce resources among the various possible activities is a major component of developing an effective promotion strategy. Research, including that covered in this report, suggests that many IPIs are failing to devote enough attention to the most basic-and least costly-promotion function, one that, if it fails, undermines all other promotion activities. Provision of services to potential investors-and particularly the provision of information-is basic to all promotion. Image-building efforts can be hugely expensive. Similarly, targeted missions and personal selling are costly in terms of both time and effort. FDI offers the prospects of growth and jobs to host countries, but attracting it requires a good deal of effort. Effective investment promotion is not only less costly than adding on more incentives for investors; reform and incentives are unlikely to accomplish their goals without promotion. Promotion efforts will, however, fail to attract desired investment if IPIs are not skilled at the most basic function: collecting and providing to potential investors relevant and timely information. Ensuring that this function works well should be the top priority in the promotion strategy and in the development of management systems.Publication Doing Business in Veneto 2009(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009)Doing business in India 2009 is the first country specific subnational report of the doing business series that measures business regulations and their enforcement across India. Doing business in India 2009 covers 10 out of the 12 previously measured cities, and documents their progress. It adds 7 new locations, expanding the study to 17 locations. Comparisons with the rest of the world are based on the indicators in doing business 2009. The indicators in doing business in India 2009 are also comparable with the data in other subnational and regional doing business reports. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. Other areas that significantly affect business, such as a country's proximity to markets, the quality of infrastructure services (other than services related to the trading across borders indicator), the security of property from theft and looting, the transparency of government procurement, macroeconomic conditions, or the underlying strength of institutions, are not directly studied by doing business.Publication Iraq Investment Climate Assessment 2012(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012)Despite decades of war and instability, Iraq's abundant natural resources, strategic geographic location and cultural history endow Iraq with tremendous potential for growth and diverse economic development. Driven by windfall oil revenues in recent years, the Government of Iraq has invested heavily in rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, and its abundant oil reserves ensure that progress can continue steadily. This report was initiated at the request of the Iraqi government to assess the local investment climate and identify those high priority factors which most significantly impede private sector development in Iraq, in an effort to prioritize the recommended investments, institutional and regulatory reforms which would most significantly contribute to sustainable private sector growth and increased productivity.Publication Connecting Green Technology Entrepreneurs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016)In face of growing concern related to climate change, green technology entrepreneurs are critically needed to develop the businesses and ideas behind climate mitigation in developing countries - but they frequently collide with challenges endemic to such environments. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the role that connections can play in helping green technology entrepreneurs innovate and scale up in developing countries, so as to inform the design of new public sector programs. Green technology entrepreneurs in developing countries need connection platforms for people, ideas, business models, transactions, as well as membership of expert communities. This study shows how cheaper, quicker, and more efficient connections can be created among stakeholders of green technology innovation in developing countries. This is done through drawing insights from a variety of public and private programs that seek to promote connections between entrepreneurs in green technology and other sectors. The report is based on 14 case studies of different programs spanning more than 80 countries. The general findings are presented in part one and insights from the individual case studies can be found in part two.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Myanmar Economic Monitor, December 2016(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-12)The Myanmar Economic Monitor (MEM) periodically takes stock of economic developments anddiscusses economic prospects and policy priorities in Myanmar. The MEM draws on available datareported by the Government of Myanmar and additional information collected as part of the WorldBank Group’s regular economic monitoring and policy dialogue. The government has carefully navigated a difficult economic and security environment in its first six months in office. In early April 2016, the economy was still recovering from a flood induced supply shock, which, together with low commodity prices, contributed to widening current account and fiscal deficits. In response the government has taken steps to try and maintain fiscal prudence, which have helped ease pressure on monetary growth and import demand.Publication "Fairtrade” and Market Failures in Agricultural Commodity Markets(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-09)This paper concerns an NGO intervention in agricultural commodity markets known as Fairtrade. Fairtrade pays producers a minimum unit price and provides capacity building support to member cooperative organizations. Fairtrade's organizational capacity support targets those factors believed to reduce the commodity producer's share of returns. Specifically, Fairtrade justifies its intervention in markets like coffee by claiming that market power and a lack of capacity in producer organizations 'marks down' the prices producers receive. As the market share of Fairtrade coffee grows in importance, its intervention in commodity markets is of increasing interest. Using an original data set collected from fieldwork in Costa Rica, this paper assesses the role of Fairtrade in overcoming the market factors it claims limits producer returns. Features of the Costa Rican input market for coffee permit a generalization of the results. The empirical results find that market power is a limiting factor in the Costa Rican market and that Fairtrade does improve the efficiency of cooperatives, thereby increasing the returns to producers. These results do not depend on the minimum price policy of Fairtrade and therefore can inform on its organizational support activities. Finally, the results also suggest that producers selling to vertically integrated, multinational coffee mills face lower producer price 'mark-downs' compared with domestically owned non-cooperative mills. This result contradicts the popular view that the increasing concentration of vertically integrated multinational firms accounts for a decline in producers' share of coffee returns.Publication Growing Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03-11)This report highlights the great potential of the agribusiness sector in Africa by drawing on experience in Africa as well as other regions. The evidence demonstrates that good policies, a conducive business environment, and strategic support from governments can help agribusiness reach its potential. Africa is now at a crossroads, from which it can take concrete steps to realize its potential or continue to lose competitiveness, missing a major opportunity for increased growth, employment, and food security. The report pursues several lines of analysis. First, it synthesizes the large body of work on agriculture and agribusiness in Africa. Second, it builds on a diagnosis of specific value chains. As part of this effort, the value chain for Africa's largest and fastest-growing food import, rice, is benchmarked in Senegal and Ghana against Thailand's rice value chain. Third, 170 agribusiness investments by the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) in Africa and Southeast Asia are analyzed to gain perspective on the elements of success and failure. Fourth, the report synthesizes perspectives from the private sector through interviews with 23 leading agribusiness investors and a number of other key informants. In conclusion, the report offers practical policy advice based on the experience of countries from within and outside Africa. The huge diversity of Africa's agro-ecological, market, and business environments, however, necessarily means that each country (and indeed regions within countries) will need to adapt the broad guidance provided here to the local context. Annex 1, concerning the rice value chain, was authored by John Orchard, Tim Chancellor, Roy Denton, Amadou Abdoulaye Fall, and Peter Jaeger. Annex 2, containing interviews with 23 leading agribusiness players in Africa, was authored by Peter White.Publication Mobilizing Finance for the Just Energy Transition in the European Union(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-24)Minimizing the adverse social and economic consequences of the energy transition is an important social aspiration. It is the essence of the “just transition,” the connective tissue that binds together climate goals with social outcomes centered around jobs. This policy note proposes the first iteration of a just transition policy framework built around three interrelated and mutually reinforcing pillars. These include: (i) a system for determining a hierarchy of priorities for activities, sectors, or groups that are to be compensated for the negative impacts they suffer from the transition to a low-carbon economy or supported because they contribute directly to a more equitable sharing of the costs and opportunities from the transition; (ii) a fiscal transfer mechanism to allocate public funds consistent with these priorities; and (iii) financial flows enablers, a set of instruments or policy interventions to facilitate private financial flows to activities or projects that are deemed to contribute to a more just transition. The assessment provides seven key takeaways for consideration by competent authorities to strengthen further the EU just transition policy framework going forward. These are: (i) narrowing the scope of the framework by focusing on social support and/or land restoration, while encouraging private sector funding for economic revitalization projects; (ii) enhancing data collection on social impact assessment to better understand the negative effects of climate transition initiatives and prevent "social washing"; (iii) embedding just transition considerations in sustainability regulations by including relevant indicators and metrics; (iv) providing guidance on assessing just transition-related risks for financial firms in prioritized regions and sectors; (v) clarifying supervisory expectations for financial firms regarding just transition-related litigation and liability risk; (vi) encouraging the development of financial instruments for the just transition; and (vii) maximizing the role of multilateral development banks in de-risking just transition projects, especially in member countries with limited resources and capacity.