Fresh Ideas About Business in Emerging Markets

The intersection of artificial intelligence and 5G mobile technology has enormous potential to deliver dramatic improvements in productivity, efficiency, and cost across business sectors and broader society, delivering innovative products and services not previously possible. Though mainstream applications that combine AI and 5G have yet to emerge, key emerging markets sectors such as agribusiness, healthcare and education will be transformed by the combination of AI and 5G. While many mobile operators remain focused on recouping their investments in previous network standards, there is a growing interest in 5G networks globally.

Transport in emerging markets often faces acute challenges due to poor infrastructure, growing populations, urbanization, and in some regions rising prosperity, which increases vehicle traffic, cargo volumes, and pollution. Artificial intelligence offers new solutions to these challenges by making market entry easier and allowing countries to reach underserved populations, creating markets and private sector investment opportunities associated with them.

Rapid increases in computing power and data generation have turned artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things into potent technologies that are rapidly gaining use in many areas of society and commerce, with significant potential benefits for economic growth and development. These innovative technologies face multiple obstacles to implementation and—particularly in the case of AI—a general wariness of their potential implications for human society. Fortunately, an integrated implementation of the three technologies may be a solution that can restore human trust in AI and blockchain applications, resulting in new business models that deliver data security and privacy, efficiency, and inclusion along with their many other benefits.

How big is the financing gap to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Can private capital fill the gap? This note provides an updated overview of estimates of SDG financing in low- and middle-income countries and gives an analytical and data-based foundation for discussion. Based on a review of recent studies, as well as IFC’s own calculations of cross-border flow trends, the note documents the ongoing and significant SDG financing gap. Raising taxes to expand public spending is an option for many middle-income countries to fill the gap, but it will be insufficient for low-income countries. Private financing, especially of infrastructure, can also contribute to bridging the gap, but it will depend on the availability of investable projects. Capital market development and improved domestic financial systems can help intermediate more private capital into available investment opportunities.

In new and challenging markets, blended concessional finance—the combining of concessional funds with other types of finance, on commercial terms—is increasingly used to mobilize capital and accelerate high impact private sector investments. However, a relatively new approach for the provision of concessional capital for use by development finance institutions is emerging—the “returnable capital” model. With this new model, principal, interest, and other amounts are repaid to the original provider of funds (usually a government) on a regular basis. Because this can reduce the impact on donor government budgets, more government funds could become available for collaboration with the private sector. This note explores the effects of this new model on incentives, accounting, resource management, and reporting.

The global race to fund, develop, and acquire artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and start-ups is intensifying, with commercial uses for AI proliferating in advanced and emerging economies alike. AI could increase GDP growth in both advanced countries and emerging markets. In healthcare, diagnosis and drug discovery will benefit enormously from AI. In manufacturing, AI can help design better products in terms of functionality, quality, and cost, and improve predictive maintenance. The potential impact of AI on transportation and logistics goes far beyond automation and road safety to span the entire logistics chain. Yet with the exceptions of China and India, emerging markets have received only a modest share of global investment in this advanced technology, despite the fact that they may benefit more from AI implementation than advanced economies.

Insurance technology, better known as Insurtech, is a rapidly growing industry that is beginning to disrupt traditional insurance provision in advanced and emerging economies alike, and is creating opportunities and challenges for incumbents, start-ups, and investors. The opportunity offered by insurtech is particularly significant in emerging markets, where a large “protection gap” exists due to low insurance penetration. This has major development implications due to the fact that economic growth and insurance penetration are closely intertwined. Technology and new business models are necessary to close the protection gap in these markets, and companies will need to be able to innovate—either internally, by partnerships, or by investing—to seize the opportunity.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enormous potential to augment human intelligence and radically alter how we access products and services, gather information, make products, and interact. In emerging markets, AI offers an opportunity to lower costs and barriers to entry for businesses and deliver innovative business models that can leapfrog traditional solutions and reach the underserved. Harnessing the power of AI is becoming increasingly important to economic development in many nations, and the goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity may become dependent on it. Private sector solutions can play a major role here; to scale new business models, develop new ways to deliver services, and increase local markets’ competitiveness.

The rapid growth of credit over the last two decades has led to increased levels of non-performing loans across the globe. This can reduce lending and hamper economic recovery, creating a vicious circle that can be difficult to break. However, robust distressed assets markets can interrupt this loop, allowing for a return to financial stability and economic growth. IFC, through its Distressed Asset Recovery Program (DARP), is taking the lead in developing strong distressed assets markets in emerging economies.

Digital Financial Services have progressed rapidly since the first mobile-money services in East Africa a decade ago. Their early success in Kenya and Tanzania sent telecom firms, banks, technology firms, and development institutions scrambling to launch similar services. Yet many or most of these new services found only limited success of their own. The process delivered valuable lessons to the industry, however, including insights about scale, effective engagement models, the importance of adopting new technologies and rethinking corporate cultures, and the need for new digital financial services and products.

Together with private sector investors, IFC has been leading a global effort to develop new guidelines for responsible investing in digital finance. These guidelines leverage IFC’s significant experience with the Equator Principles and responsible investing in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by focusing on strengthening governance, risk management, consumer protection, and financial well-being for the unbanked and underserved—as well as IFC’s experience as advisor and investor in the digital finance space.

Blended concessional finance, the combination of concessional funds with other types of finance on commercial terms, has great potential to mobilize capital and accelerate high-impact private sector investments in new and challenging markets. Yet full development of these efforts requires strong governance. IFC has been working to develop a robust governance system for blended concessional finance, guided by the Development Finance Institutions Enhanced Principles, a set of principles that employ special operating procedures and checks and balances when using blended concessional finance for private sector projects. These institutions need to learn from each other to ensure good governance, as the sharing of experiences is crucial to building global trust in the use of concessional funds. And to work well, governance structures need to be transparent and focus on solving potential conflicts of interest.

Technology disrupts and transforms. And disruptive technologies are critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, many of which can be advanced and accelerated through technological innovations. For a comprehensive examination of the ways these innovations alter private sector business models in emerging markets, IFC conducted a tour of the technology horizon in eight selected sectors—power, transport, water and sanitation, digital infrastructure, manufacturing, agribusiness, education, and financial services—and six selected themes, from gender and climate-smart cities to e-logistics and personal identification, among others. This report examines each of these sectors and themes in terms of what true disruption looks like, which technologies are most likely to have a dramatic impact, and the specific opportunities they offer.

In the clean energy transition, the value of natural gas infrastructure is very important for operating the energy system. Gas-fired power plants contribute to optimized energy systems when they are designed to operate flexibly, responding to demand patterns and the variable supply of renewable energy. Smart electricity grids, renewable energy, battery storage technology, and gas-fired power plants in combination will generally be the lowest cost, low-carbon solution to the growing energy requirements of emerging markets. Private investors and financiers are responding to these opportunities, but the full potential will only be reached with improvements in policy, regulation, and procurement in destination markets.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is estimated to require additional financing on the order of $2.6 trillion in emerging markets and low-income countries in 2030. A substantial increase in private investment is required to close this financing gap. The Investor Forum held at the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires Summit, which included some of the world’s largest investors, focused on solutions to these challenges. The resulting Buenos Aires Call to Action calls for a more regular dialogue with policy makers at the highest level and underlines the need to break away from the short-termism that plagues current investment strategies.

This report provides an examination of blockchain implementation in financial services and global supply chains; a regional analysis of blockchain developments in emerging markets; and a new focus on blockchain’s ability to facilitate low-carbon energy solutions as well as a discussion of the legal and governance issues associated with the technology’s adoption.

Blockchain is an emerging technology that enables direct transactions within a ledger without need for a central authority or trusted intermediary. In emerging markets, it has the potential to re-engineer economic models and enable the creation of markets and products previously unavailable or unprofitable. But organizations considering its use must also consider the risks and how they can be managed. These include jurisdictional challenges, crypto assets, privacy and data protection, double spending, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Emerging market countries require substantial foreign investment for development, economic growth, and poverty alleviation. There are multiple challenges to attracting this investment, however, ranging from political and economic instability to corruption, poor security, and small market size. An additional challenge is inadequate delivery of key services like electricity and other utilities that private firms and investors rely on. Service performance guarantees are a promising approach to addressing this issue. These guarantees enable firms to purchase protection against poor or insufficient service delivery, and they may work particularly well in industrial or export processing zones by ensuring that shortfalls in service delivery are measured, reported, and addressed in a timely manner.

Emerging markets must attract significant international financing to meet their goals for mitigating carbon pollution and increasing access to clean, affordable, reliable, and resilient energy. The authors of this note examine how blockchain technology can—if paired with smart, interconnected devices—promote needed investments by both improving investment processes and promoting the adoption of modern energy systems and business models. Given the nascent status of both blockchain technology and blockchain applications specific to the energy sector, this note offers guidance to better assess where and how to apply blockchain technology to achieve a modern, clean, energy future including in emerging markets.

Blending funds from private investors with concessional funds from donors and philanthropic sources has a strong potential to scale up investment in lower-income countries and thereby accelerate development. The use of blended concessional finance is already prevalent in lower-income countries representing over 70 percent of IFC’s commitments. Recent strategies from development finance institutions including the World Bank Group indicate that the relative share of lower-income countries in the global mix of blended concessional finance will increase further. Scaling up engagements in lower-income countries requires solutions tailored to local contexts, as well as the deployment of the whole spectrum of development finance tools, including advisory work, regulatory dialogue and reform, and a mix of blending instruments encompassing both pricing and risk mitigation features.

Global efforts to counter terrorism financing and money laundering have led banks to terminate relationships with some communities, businesses, and individuals around the world. When a financial institution or intermediary cannot easily judge the identity and associated risks of a customer, it is often more efficient to avoid transacting with that customer altogether. This may disproportionately affect small banks, small firms, and low-income individuals in emerging and developing economies. This Compass Note explores an innovative solution that could help improve customer due diligence through a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) utility.

Competition from commercial banks is prompting microfinance institutions in urban areas of Peru and other Latin American nations to provide more service to lower-income groups. Where higher-income clients are already served by commercial banks, microfinance institutions compete by attending to a new demographic, while continuing to serve higher-income clients where commercial banking services are scarce.

Developing a proper governance and regulatory framework for blockchain-based applications will be essential to providing market participants the stability they need to fully engage with the technology, and allowing innovation to flourish. Given the global, multi-sectoral reach of blockchain, regulators and industry will have to work in a collaborative manner to ensure they can both experiment and learn, and so shape the future of the technology in a way that benefits all parties and society as a whole.

Private businesses and investors can create markets and accelerate growth for low-income communities in emerging markets. In doing so, they benefit from estimates of poverty in the targeted market segments they seek to serve. While national household surveys provide poverty data, they are often too costly and overly broad for the purposes of private enterprises. Use of the Poverty Probability Index can help businesses improve their estimates of poverty and thereby better tailor their operations and strategies to specific populations.

Created in Peru in 2008, Works for Taxes is an innovative approach to accelerating infrastructure investment. It allows private firms to “pay” their income taxes in advance through the execution of public works projects. By accepting infrastructure projects in lieu of future taxes, national, regional, and local governments can forego mobilization of public funds and reduce the burden on government budgets, as the private sector assumes the upfront costs and management of new infrastructure projects.