Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs

Metrics and Impact

ANDE member organizations play a number of roles in supporting entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Two main areas of focus are:

• Help small and growing businesses succeed. Our members work closely with entrepreneurs to help them build their companies. We believe this will, in turn, stimulate and create a more dynamic market for the local capital and service providers, as well as create a constituency to demand improvements in the overall business environment. By helping create and build successful small and growing businesses (SGBs), we believe ANDE members will demonstrate that SGBs can be an attractive market for local commercial banks to serve profitably.
• Create the conditions for local markets to work. Ultimately, for SGBs to succeed, they need to have access to locally generated products and services for their business needs. We believe our work is helping create this market.  Among other activities, our members are committed to working with local commercial banks to develop profitable products to serve SGBs, creating networks of angel investors to invest in SGBs, working with educational institutions to improve their ability to train the next generation of managers, and  working with local technical assistance providers on product selection or processing.

The true constraint to growth of capital and assistance for SGBs is the gap between investors with capital and funding for technical assistance and the opportunities on the ground in emerging markets. ANDE is, in part, a collective effort to bridge the gap. The amount of capital and technical assistance made available to SGBs has grown rapidly. We have identified an estimated 192 organizations providing approximately $7 billion in capital and services to small and growing businesses in developing countries.