October 12, 2012
Lillian Alwi, right, leads students in song at the Ongata Pine Breeze Academy outside Nairobi, Kenya. As school director, Alwi has used two loans from the Kenya Women’s Finance Trust (KWFT) to build Pine Breeze into a bustling source of hope for more than 500 children from a poor community in the Ngong Hills – “my passion,” she says. OPIC Read more…
October 09, 2012
An interdepartmental OPIC team traveled to Kenya in June to monitor the performance of three financial institutions whose microfinance lending is supported by the agency: Musoni, the Kenya Women’s Finance Trust, and Equity Bank. Over the course of three days, members of OPIC’s Office of Investment Policy, Portfolio Management Department, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Finance Department, and Office of External Read more…
October 02, 2012 By Elizabeth Littlefield Wade Rain is a small family-owned business in Tualtin, Oregon that distributes irrigation equipment – most of which is made in the United States. About ten years ago, the company saw an opportunity to expand into Mexico, where heavy farming and light rainfall have combined to deplete the water table. Wade Rain knew that the irrigation equipment Read more…
October 01, 2012
The need to form partnerships and collaborate emerged as a common theme over the past week as top world leaders converged in New York for both the 67th General Assembly of the United Nations and the Clinton Global Initiative. President Barack Obama spoke at the United Nations of “an interdependent world (where) all of us have a stake in working Read more…
September 28, 2012
OPIC President and CEO Elizabeth Littlefield met with Malawian President Joyce Banda this week at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their meeting coincided with the opening of the 67th session of the U.N, General Assembly and Ms. Littlefield’s participation in the Clinton Global Initiative. Ms. Littlefield said OPIC in interested in helping Malawi develop its economy and create Read more…
September 21, 2012
The Harmelia sunflower farm near Kharkiv in Ukraine, the world’s largest producer of sunflower oil. OPIC is an investor in the project through its support for the SigmaBleyzer Investment Fund for Southeast Europe. The project is having a positive developmental impact to Ukraine by introducing advanced crop management technology to the farm, which also produces, corn, wheat and rapeseed.
September 10, 2012
Innovation has long been a core value at OPIC: It is reflected in the groundbreaking financial and insurance products we offer to support U.S. companies operating in some of the most challenging places on the planet, as well as in the way we conduct our internal operations. Recently OPIC was recognized for our ability to adapt to change by seeking Read more…
September 05, 2012
Late last month, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) reported that farmers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are increasing the use of small-scale irrigation schemes as a result of drought that puts the security of food supplies at risk. The three-year study found that, rather than wait for rainfall, smallholder farmers, whose farms supply food for individual families, are Read more…
August 31, 2012
It is fitting that the focus of this year’s World Water Week is the connection between water security and food security. It has been an unusually dry summer throughout much of the U.S., and a drought in even a single major food-producing country poses an additional threat to world food prices, which are already at an all-time high. Even before Read more…
August 24, 2012
A field in Mexico uses a drip tape irrigation system provided by Wade Rain Inc., a small business based in Tualatin, Oregon. Wade Rain’s Mexican subsidiary sells irrigation equipment — most of it manufactured in the U.S. — to small farms in central Mexico and has helped introduce more efficient irrigation technologies such as drip tape, in which long lines Read more…
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