Global Change Requires Local Leadership

This post originally appeared in Foreign Policy’s April Issue. Mert Tangonan was stuck. It was 2017, and Tangonan, a native of the Philippines, wanted to persuade the country’s largest banks to accept digital payments. With 99% of the transactions conducted in cash or checks across the nation’s 7,000 islands, the banks had little incentive to…

Development Works Here with Andres McAlister

We’d like you to meet Andres McAlister! Andres is an integrated supply chain manager on the Global Health Supply Chain team on the PSM (Procurement Supply Management) Project. Andres discusses how he became interested in development, his experience in the MiniMasters program brought by Chemonics’ partnership with Arizona State University, and what motivates him. Andres…

Innovation → Accelerating Progress Toward the SDGs

Innovation. Beyond its value as a buzzword, what does it mean for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? Like those of the past, today’s challenges – climate change, global health security, sociopolitical unrest – demand innovative solutions. As development professionals, how do we adopt the mindset needed to foster innovative thinking? What lessons can we learn…

Preventing Culture from Eating Your Strategy

This blog post has been adapted from an article in Journal of Social Science & Medicine – Population Health. If you’ve worked in development for long enough, at some point you’ve scratched your head about why a technically sound strategy achieved less than expected results. As the old business adage goes, “Culture eats strategy for…

In TransIT: Enhancing Visibility Across In-Country Supply Chains

A pregnant smallholder farmer in rural Mozambique has enough on her mind. Harvesting, getting wood, finding water, cooking, and feeding ― the list goes on. She also needs access to a clinic for an antenatal visit, where she should also receive long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) to protect her and her young children during the upcoming…

From Threat to Solution: Rethinking the Role of Communities in Nature Conservation

This post originally appeared on Mongabay. Photo courtesy of Samantha Cheng. The imperative for nature conservation has never been greater. A widely publicized intergovernmental report predicts extinction for more than a million species over the next few decades unless we drastically change human consumption and economic growth. This loss of species will threaten the global…

Transportation Management System: TransIT and ePOD

In 2018, Chemonics developed a transportation management tool called TransIT, which is currently being used on the GHSC-PSM project. With engineering support provided by Chemonics’ partner Arizona State University, TransIT uses a cloud-based system that enables access to transportation information anytime and anywhere while minimizing infrastructure, set-up, and maintenance costs. The tool aggregates end-to-end data…

Continuing Learning with Arizona State University

In 2018, as part of Chemonics’ commitment to continual learning and higher education for its global workforce, Chemonics and ASU teamed up to provide Chemonics’ employees across the globe with a first-of-its-kind opportunity to pursue pathways to continual education at a prestigious university in a flexible, low-cost format. This MiniMasters program was custom designed by…

Chemonics – Arizona State University Partnership for Innovation

By combining ASU’s depth across a wide variety of academic disciplines with Chemonics’ practical international development experience in 150 countries worldwide, our goal is to create a free exchange of ideas and a worldwide laboratory for testing and scaling innovations to solve the world’s toughest problems. The shared objectives for both parties includes apply research…

News: Partnering to Improve Lives in Frontier Economies

The Frontier Economies Logistics Lab (FELL) meeting will convene more than 100 forward-thinking supply chain leaders from the private sector, academia, and global development community to exchange ideas and harness commercial tools to enhance supply chains and improve people’s lives in developing countries. “This summer FELL meeting will focus on applying specific commercial tools and…

Evidence on Biodiversity Conservation Impacts: Assessing Theories, Approaches, and Outcomes from Community Engagement and Tenure

This review was undertaken as part of a joint initiative, the Conservation Solutions Lab, between Arizona State University and Chemonics, and seeks to build knowledge and evidence-based approaches for more effective community engagement in conservation. The analysis revealed that the current evidence base is lacking the robust data needed to uncover the links between governance…