Autonomy is a basic business premise and Europe is well known as a source of many good development aid practices in this field that can be adapted and transferred around the world. The European Union is a global pioneer in many international development matters. This includes the growing policy prevalence of strategic financial instruments that use relatively small amounts of public funding to attract larger sums of privately financed investments for sustainable development purposes.
Europe’s marine economies and island communities are among the regions and sectors that have benefitted greatly from the autonomy resulting from replacing public funds with private finance in international development programmes. The current flagship instrument being implemented to do this in a coordinated manner consistently across more than 20 differing European sovereign states is BlueInvest. This success story from Europe should be of interest to DevelopmentAid readers involved with donor finance as well as fisheries and marine economies.
Most of what you need to know is available freely online through the BlueInvest Maritime Forum. Here you can discover more about how coaching support embedded within the BlueInvest aid packages is such a key success factor for strategic financial instruments.
Examples from the website illustrate the impact from using mentoring to build investment capacity and company autonomy. BlueInvest not only provides financial credit for development projects. It also subsidises advisory services to help its beneficiaries shape their vision, craft business plans, identify areas of vulnerability, prepare for fundraising, and assist in the creation of compelling investment pitches.
Success stories include science-based fishery firms like SEAentia who received subsidised support from BlueInvest for its company development plans. BlueInvest also supports projects that diversify the blue economy such as this tidal energy plant technology.
International development advantages from these types of strategic financial instruments are available all around the planet. They reinforce the resilience and autonomy of those they invest in by reducing reliance on public resources. In the case of BlueInvest, they also show how to create new forms of modern marine employment opportunities with relevance around the world.
You can join and follow the BlueInvest community of practice on its networking platform.