Ian Sayers

Ian Sayers is ITC’s Head of Access to Finance and Enterprise Sustainability. He is responsible for improving access to and use of financing for sustainable SME growth and for helping SMEs to understand and apply sustainable business practices and technologies to improve their profitability whilst reducing their impact on the planet.

Mr Sayers has more than 35 years of enterprise and sector value-chain development experience, leading change with some of the world’s largest multinationals, governments, entrepreneurs and the smallest rural communities. He is a community leader for the World Economic Forum’s Accelerating Sustainable Development platform, a member of the Skoll Foundation and alumnus of Oxford, Cranfield and Newcastle Universities. Since 1992, he has pioneered the integration of inclusive value chain development, systems and alliances into approaches that form the basis of many social and economic development programmes around the world. He is now bringing this thinking to the application of new technologies, access to financing and sustainable growth for enterprises in developing countries.