Growth and employment

Denmark has special focus on furthering market-based economic growth and employment, among other things by means of a significant strengthening of the effort to develop the private sector in the developing countries.

No country has ever succeeded in reducing poverty without sustained economic growth. Poverty is only reduced through broadly-based growth that spreads to every stratum of society and benefits more than a small elite. Moreover, broadly-based growth creates more jobs and thus opportunities for the poor to create an income and improve their own life situation.

This is why Danida supports the development of the private sector in the developing countries. Priorities and activities take their point of departure in the developing countries’ needs and demand, lessons learned, the recommendations of the Africa Commission, coordination with other donor and the strategic framework for the priority area of growth and employment

The Africa Commission’s five initiatives

In 2009 the Commission, which was formed by the Danish government in 2008, made a number of recommendations and proposed the following concrete international initiatives to create growth and employment in the private sector in the developing countries:

• The establishment of a guarantee fund that safeguards loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa.
• Ensuring access to energy at local level.
• Setting up an index that measures Africa’s competitiveness on the global market
• Support for young African entrepreneurs.
• Make university programmes more business oriented in the field of agriculture, and improve vocational education programmes to create more jobs.

Instruments and approaches for creating growth and employment

Denmark works to improve the framework conditions of the business sector in the developing countries. We do this both through international cooperation in, for example, the WTO, the World Bank and the EU, and through programs such as business sector programs, Danida Business Partnerships, Danida Business Finance and the Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries (IFU).

New business partnershis instrument

As a consequence of Danida’s new strategic framework for the prioritised area “Growth and Employment from February 2011, the Business-to-Business (B2B) program and the program for Innovative Partnerships for Development (IPD) has been replaced by Danida Business (DB) Partnerships. The new DB Partnership are effectuated from August 2011.

Ongoing projects with support from B2B and IPD will be administrated according to the guidelines for these programs, until the finalization of the current phase, thereafter the Partnership will transferre to the new program.
Links to new and old guidelines are available from the menu to the left on this page