Increased Support For Small And Growing Businesses Helps Advance Emerging-Market Prosperity

“We will have achieved success when people at the ‘base of the pyramid’ have access to quality products at competitive prices,” said Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui, managing partner at IGNIA, an impact-investing venture capital firm based in Monterrey, Mexico. "When so many entrepreneurs see thriving companies in emerging countries that they set up competing enterprises, thereby creating entire new industries, then we’ll have succeeded.”

Rodriguez is referring to the work of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a global nonprofit that will present its 2011 Impact Report this evening at a meeting hosted by Pamela P. Flaherty, president and CEO of Citi Foundation and director of corporate citizenship at Citi. ANDE is a group of more than 150 public and private investors, corporations, grant-making foundations, research and training institutions, and capacity development organizations that invest in and support the development of “small and growing businesses” (SGBs) in over 150 developing countries. Citi Foundation and IGNIA are both members.

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