Shell Foundation Articles

5.0 Shell Foundation's experience on the ground: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Below we illustrate how the four elements of our approach – financial viability, scaleability, deployment of business DNA and harnessing of corporate value-creating assets – are present in and add value to what we do as a corporate foundation. We draw in detail in the main text on material from our Energise and Breathing Space programmes which address the energy and poverty challenge. We also refer extensively to other activities of ours in the footnotes and in Annex 2.

5.1 Case Study 1: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Sustainable solutions to Indoor Air Pollution: the biggest killer you’ve never heard of

5.2 Case Study 2: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Catalysing the pro-poor market for solar home systems

5.3 Case Study 3: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Nurturing pro-poor small enterprise in southern India via the social merchant bank model

5.4 Case Study 4: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
SME investment funds – deploying local capital and the challenge of going to scale

5.5 Energy access as market failure: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
In sub-Saharan African countries as in other poor regions, development of the SME sector in energy and other segments is constrained by market failure.

5.6 Deciding on the right approach: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
We took explicit account of this reality in adapting our model (viability, scaleability, business DNA and Shell Group assets) to develop a ‘market entry’ strategy into the Ugandan and South African energy SME sector. This strategy had four components:

5.7 Meeting the needs of the entrepreneur: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Simply making finance available in the $10,000 to $500,000 deal size was crucial to attracting the interest of Ugandan and South African SMEs since it had never been available before. But other features were also designed into the model to provide tailor-made support to entrepreneurs.

5.8 So far so good in Uganda: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
While both SME energy funds are still young, the pace of capitalisation in Uganda has been very rapid, indicating interest in the market and an encouraging depth of demand. UEF will be fully committed before the end of 2005 – well before the original close-out date.

5.9 Applying lessons learned from Uganda in South Africa: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Based on what we learned in Uganda through UEF (including the convening power that the Shell brand had with local banks) we established ETEF, our South African fund, with new financial products and an independent intermediary in the form of an independent fund manager with particular expertise in the small-scale energy sector in place from the start.

6.0 Propositions and conclusion: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
We have argued throughout that the expansion of enterprise, particularly SMEs, is critical to economic and poverty reduction. This is hardly a new or revolutionary argument. It has been advanced by many others starting probably with Adam Smith. Indeed, a great deal of government policies and IDC interventions over the years have focused on creating the enabling environment for the expansion of the private sector in poor countries.

6.1 Propositions for the international development community: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
The first set relate primarily to the role of donors (including corporate foundations and philanthropy programmes) who, because they control the money, are critically important influences on what issues IDC actors focus on and how they work.

6.2 Propositions for engaging the international business community: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
Our second set of propositions relates to the role of large businesses, especially multinational corporations, in tackling poverty. Our core position is that through harnessing its value-creating assets, big business is especially well-equipped to add enormous value to pro-poor enterprise initiatives – and elsewhere in the war against poverty.

6.3 Come Together: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
an invitation to invest in proving and positioning enterprise as a key part of the solution to poverty

1.0 Executive Summary: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
The modern world has always encompassed extremes of affluence and poverty. But in 2005 the confluence of advocacy, political serendipity and natural disaster has rapidly pushed the plight of the impoverished up the agenda of the wealthy as never before. The sharpness of the challenge being thrown down on behalf of the poor and the pressure on the rich to take action in response is unprecedented, as is the level of debate on a topic previously all but ignored by the public and mainstream media.

2.0 Introduction: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
This paper has two objectives. The first is to introduce the Shell Foundation and its way of working. The second is to offer up insights drawn from our experience as a contribution to the wider debate on how the private sector and the International Development Community (IDC) can most effectively catalyse equitable, self-sustaining development in poor countries (see annex 1).

3.0 The case for putting pro-poor enterprise at the heart of the war on poverty: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
2005 is set to be a big year for poverty. Doubling aid, making trade fair and dropping Third World debt are the headline goals of a campaign being waged and supported by many official and nongovernmental aid and development organisations determined to make ‘Make Poverty History'.

4.0 Learning by doing: Enterprise solutions to poverty - Click To Read Article
the Shell Foundation experience in catalysing pro-poor enterprise development


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