Nearly 100 development finance experts from the public and private sectors recently gathered at the USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia to discuss ways to generate private capital to projects that will help the region in sectors such as agriculture, clean energy, education and health. The three-day gathering brought together government employees, donor organizations, non-governmental organizations, implementing partners, private sector partners, entrepreneurs and investors to talk about innovative ideas in development finance in Asia.

"Partnering with the private sector is not about funding, it’s collaboration, aligning interest and trust,” said Alison Eskesen, the keynote speaker from “Grow Asia,” a partnership run by the World Economic Forum in partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Secretariat, which works to enable sustainable and inclusive agricultural development in the region focusing on smallholder farmers. Participants heard from top investors and entrepreneurs, learned about their experiences and how USAID can best collaborate with these organizations to design programs that appeal to the private sector while achieving key development goals.

“It is important to find the gaps that the private sector can’t fill, not to copy what they are doing,” said Robert Kraybill, the managing director of Impact Investment Exchange Asia. Sessions highlighted the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Southeast Asia in the run-up to the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, a White House-led initiative in Silicon Valley in June that will bring together top entrepreneurs and investors to spur new investments in startups around the world.

Follow #financing4dev on Twitter to join the conversation or visit www.ges2016.org to learn more about the summit. Please click here to see more photos from the workshop.