By Bert van der Vaart, SEAF co-founder and CEO While the COVID-19 crisis continues to spread on a scale never before seen, many in international development and impact investment should start thinking of what comes next. The economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for the emerging...
Dear friends and colleagues, We are into our 6th week of corona-inspired restrictions on normal life here in the Netherlands. Our Prime Minister has taken to styling our domestic corona approach as an ‘intelligent lockdown,’ driven more by trust than by compulsion. And the more I...
By Bert van der Vaart, SEAF Co-founder and CEO Many people have asked me about what they should invest in post-COVID-19. Elsewhere, I have provided some thoughts about what I expect the investment world will look like following this global crisis. Here, I endeavor to provide...
By David Mathewson, SEAF Senior Managing Director One advantage of investing in emerging markets for over thirty years is that we can safely say that we have worked our way through every conceivable crisis: multiple currency crises, civil wars, regional wars, financial panics, government changes, and...
From Bob Webster, SEAF COO SEAF and its Centers for Entrepreneurship and Executive Development (CEED) have been helping our portfolio companies and clients act on this very question. The challenges are immediate and significant, but there are strategies and tools to both weather the storm and...
In February 2020, SEAF Vice President Katharina Inkiriwang attended the AVPN Southeast Asia Conference in Bali - “Leveraging the Power of Networks” - which brought together a diverse array of stakeholders. With all conferences canceled for the foreseeable future, we look back at this event...
Transformative Interventions in SMEs through Gender Focused Entrepreneur Ecosystem Development and the Gender Equality Scorecard© SEAF pursues gender equality and women economic empowerment to deliver on its mission of “Improving Lives and Communities through Entrepreneur-Focused Investment” as the organization understands the critical role of SMEs as...
A View from The Front Lines March 18, 2020 - Sichuan, China SEAF Sichuan SME Investment Fund (“SSIF”) was founded in 2001 to fill the shortage of growth capital available to private enterprises in Sichuan, a western province of more than 80 million people. As with...
Gender equality is an enabler and accelerator for virtually all the Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”). Gender equality is a goal in its own right (SDG5), but cuts across all 17 SDGs and is reflected in 45 targets and 54 gender-specific indicators (UNDP, 2019). Women's Economic...
Building a Strong Demonstration Effect to Catalyze Capital towards Women Economic Empowerment Initiatives Gender Financing Gaps The financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries is estimated to be $2.5 - $3 trillion per year, according to United Nations Development Program’s and UN...
