This book is essential reading for anyone interested in shaping a more livable world, from entrepreneurs to investors, corporates, nonprofits, and governments. Dr. Helms brings together the latest economic research and her own insights from 30 years in the field to show how market-based solutions are critical to pulling people out of poverty in the developing markets. Access for All lights the way to a future of economic inclusion and challenges us to collaborate across private and public sectors to create a more prosperous and sustainable world. If you want to make the world a better place, read this book! —Elizabeth Nelson, chair of the Board of Managers, DAI
This book comes at a unique moment in history. The world’s attention is finally zeroing in on deep economic divides in counties across the globe. At the same time, technology, globalization, and new business models now offer exciting new opportunities to pull previously excluded people across that divide fast. Packed with real-life stories in technology, the gig economy, mobile health care, education, and new agriculture, Brigit Helms has written a crisp and quick-paced tour of economic inclusion, from its roots in microfinance through to impact and SDG investing. Following the model of her first book at CGAP, Access for All is a refreshing and informative romp for development veterans and millennial entrepreneurs alike. -Elizabeth Littlefield, Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and Former Chairman and CEO of OPIC
This is an excellent primer for the general reader on one of the central challenges of our time for rich and poor countries alike—building an inclusive economy. But it is more than that: It is a vital reference for development experts, policy makers, impact investors, civil society, corporations, and multinational organizations. Helms assembles an impressive array of data and evidence on the landscape of poverty and the performance of the many players that must interact collaboratively for success. This is a rare, comprehensive look at all the important moving parts of the system—where the gears mesh and where they don’t. —Nancy Lee, Senior Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development
Access for All Tells the story of the revolution in economic development of the last 15 years. New technologies, new approaches, a new generation of entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs, and policies that support all this have begun to unleash the greatest untapped resource: the human talent of the world’s poor. We have come a long way, but we have further to go and Access for All maps the way ahead over the next 15 years. —Daniel Runde, Senior Vice President; William A. Schreyer Chair and Director, Project on Prosperity and Development, Center for Strategic and International Studies
If you’re looking to enter the world of inclusive economic development or you want to refresh your knowledge of it, Access for All covers everything you’d want to know. But it’s much more than a primer. Comprehensive in its understanding of developing economies and the emerging solutions to problems encountered there, Access for All is packed with tips and full of ideas to design a more inclusive world. And it distills these ideas with a clarity and brevity that helps us learn, and then apply our own thinking to the field. —Toshiyuki Yasui, Guest Professor, Graduate School of System Design and Management, Keio University, Japan
Brigit Helms has crafted an excellent overview of the profound ways in which economies and economic opportunities are changing in today’s world, and equally profound implications of this for development assistance. She maps out how every major area—be it health, food, energy, finance—is transforming, due to new technology, population shifts, and climate change. She provides examples of new approaches that respond far more effectively to these changes than old-style, centralized, government-led programs. While she notes the new risks in this brave new world, she focuses on the new hopes and possibilities that innovations raise for truly eliminating poverty and raising living standards worldwide. She sets out a new agenda that companies (particularly small firms), critical infrastructure providers and governments should follow so that those left out of recent growth might finally be included—an agenda with very different roles and balance than has governed international development work to date. A must-read for all those committed to eliminating poverty in our lifetime. —Matt Gamser, CEO, SME Finance Forum, International Finance Corporation