In recent years, there has been growing interest and funding dedicated to technical assistance (TA) designed to strengthen the commercial and development impact of businesses in developing markets. However, relatively little is known about the nature and effectiveness of these initiatives. To help address that knowledge gap, this paper focuses on efforts by development finance institutions (DFIs) to provide technical assistance to agribusinesses, which—while comprising only a small share of overall DFI investment portfolios—receive 30% of all TA. This research has three objectives:
- Contribute to the knowledge base about technical assistance provided by DFIs;
- Quantify the split between core and inclusive TA provided to agribusinesses;
- Summarise qualitative issues raised by DFI respondents related to the provision of inclusive TA.
To conduct the analysis, the authors used secondary research and interviewed 11 DFIs to capture information on their use of technical assistance.
