Four years ago, back-to-back misfortunes upended Hafeeza Begum’s life. She knew it fell to her to get her young family back on their feet.

It is something of a paradox that, while there is broad agreement that micro-, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are an integral part of the economy in developing countries, they remain underserved.

The Haor region is a wetland ecosystem in north-eastern Bangladesh, which is located in a tectonic depression. During the monsoon period, the Haor gets between 3,000 and 4,000 mm of rainfall, together with the flow of monsoon river from the Meghalaya and Barak basins.

When Mosammat Karfunnesa, 50, was raising her four sons in rural Bangladesh, she could not afford to send them to school, and her husband, a rural laborer, was often unemployed. But despite these challenges, Karfunnesa never gave up on wanting to make a difference for her family.

IFAD and the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh have signed an agreement to launch a project to accelerate inclusive economic growth, sustainably reduce poverty and improve food and nutrition security.

More than 342,000 people in southeast Bangladesh living on coastal chars created by silt deposits will benefit from new financing for a project to reduce poverty and hunger and develop rural livelihoods. People living on chars are often hardest hit by climate change effects like sea-level rise as they often live in poorly constructed housing and on low-lying land that is vulnerable to extreme weather.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Bangladesh today signed a financing agreement to significantly increase incomes and food and nutrition security for 250,000 rural households in southern Bangladesh where the highest percentage of rural poor reside.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Bangladesh signed a financing agreement today to sustainably improve incomes and promote resilience to extreme weather conditions for 303,000 rural households in six flood-prone districts in northern Bangladesh.