15 February 2018
Unilever, DFID Partner for Low-income Households
UN Photo/Mark Garten
story highlights

This second phase of the DFID-Unilever initiative will quadruple its size from £10 million to £40 million.

It is expected to enable 100 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to access products and services that will improve health, livelihoods, the environment or wellbeing by 2025.

18 January 2018: A partnership between Unilever and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has pledged £40 million to support market-based solutions that meet low-income household needs in developing countries, through a second phase of the TRANSFORM initiative.

Through financial support for social enterprises and behavior-change interventions, the initiative aims to enable 100 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to access products and services that will improve health, livelihoods, the environment or wellbeing by 2025. This second phase will quadruple the programme’s size from £10 million to £40 million.

DFID and Unilever founded TRANSFORM in 2015 to solve development challenges by bringing private sector innovation and commercial approaches together in order to achieve the SDGs. Thus far, the initiative has supported 19 projects in nine countries, benefiting over a quarter of a million people, including through a mobile platform for shopkeepers in Kenya and a portable handwashing station for low-income households in Bangladesh.

Speaking about the initiative, Clive Allison, Unilever, said the SDGs offer “the business opportunity of a lifetime,” adding that “disruptors” are driving new innovations and business models that will lead to economic transformation. He said the TRANSFORM initiative will help unlock these opportunities and scale solutions that work. [Unilever Press Release] [TRANSFORM Initiative Website]

related posts