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The Emergence of InfraTech: How AI and Other Digital Technologies are Enabling Climate-Resilient Transportation Infrastructure in LMICs
An estimated 1 billion people around the world lack access to all-weather roads. As Caylee Talpert at AnyWay Solutions explains, this means that over 12% of the global population cannot travel to school or work reliably throughout the year. She highlights the impacts of this gap, and explores how artificial intelligence, satellite and drone technology, and other advanced "InfraTech" solutions are optimizing climate-resilient transportation infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries.
- Categories
- Technology, Transportation
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Are Impact Investors Really Listening?: Why Capturing Stakeholder Insights is Key to Impactful Investment Strategies
Collecting data is easy for impact investors; acting on it is harder. As Taanya Khare at Acumen explains, most impact investment firms turn data-driven insights into action through intentional spaces like investment committees or portfolio review sessions. But she argues that listening is about more than surveys or feedback loops — it requires investors to sit down with company teams to make sense of customer insights, identify blind spots and co-create better solutions and impact strategies. She shares what Acumen has learned from embedding listening and impact management into every stage of its investment process.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Right Decision, Wrong Reasons: The Way Forward from the Attack on Global Aid
The global aid system is fracturing, with profound implications for the roughly 4 billion people who live on less than $7 a day — and especially for the 120+ million who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. But as Simon Marot Touloung, Elana Banin and Jakob Øster argue, while recent attacks on the system may be overly simplistic, they point to a real issue: Humanitarian aid had failed to evolve, and it is structurally incapable of catalyzing the long-term economic transformation displaced communities need. They explore some market-based alternatives to traditional aid, and propose five principles to guide the transition from the failing aid model toward new approaches that can actually deliver resilience and dignity.
- Categories
- Investing
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Africa is Done Waiting: 10 Key Takeaways from Africa HealthTech Summit 2025
NextBillion was a media partner at last week's Africa HealthTech Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, which focused on the theme: “Connected Care: Scaling Innovation Towards Universal Health Coverage.” NextBillion managing editor James Militzer shares 10 takeaways from the event — and four video interviews with key thought leaders — covering topics that range from the role of the private sector in driving healthtech innovation, to the problem of "pilotitis" and the need for a new narrative around African development.
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- Health Care
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SACCOs, Social Collateral and Bitcoin Communities: A Filmmaker Documents New (and Old) Ways to Extend Financial Inclusion Past the Limits of Fintech
Luke Willms worked at an African NGO, where he was tasked with creating short videos to showcase the positive impacts of its microcredit program. But as the video project progressed, his assumptions about the effectiveness of microfinance began to unravel. He would spend the next seven years filming stories from across Africa and other regions, exploring whether microlending still held relevance in a rapidly changing world. The resulting documentary, “Unbankable,” was released last year, with the goal of helping to reframe the global conversation around financial inclusion. He shares key stories from the movie, which show how Africa’s informal, trust-based financial systems offer models of resilience and adaptation that could find new applications in other emerging countries.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Consultants at a Crossroads in Global Development: New Research Reveals their Challenges — And Highlights Strategies for Navigating the Current Disruption
The dismantling of USAID earlier this year has had many ripple effects, including over 238,000 global jobs lost at the agency and its implementing partners. But according to development consultants Alethia Wong and Lorenz Wild, the plight of independent consultants working in global development — who are often not represented in workforce statistics — hasn't received much attention. To better understand these impacts on the consulting ecosystem, they launched a survey of independent consultants earlier this year: They share the results in this article, exploring how development consultants are pivoting to earn income and how contracting companies can support them — and sharing advice from job recruiters for consultants looking for full-time roles.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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How India’s Non-Bank Financial Companies are Closing the MSME Credit Gap — And What Other Emerging Markets Can Learn from Their Success
Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) make up around 90% of businesses and employ over half of the workforce globally, while generating up to 40% of GDP and creating 70% of formal jobs in emerging markets. Yet according to Sameer Nanda at Ugro Capital Limited, these businesses face an ongoing credit gap that, in India alone, amounts to an estimated ₹80 trillion. He explains how non-bank financial companies are addressing this gap by offering dynamic and flexible lending services designed for MSMEs — and shares useful lessons from their approach that can be applied in other emerging economies with similar credit challenges.
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When AI Gets It Wrong: Lessons from a Women-Centered Design Experiment Highlight the Need for Inclusive GPTs
In emerging markets, women entrepreneurs continue to face systemic barriers to financial inclusion. And as Koheun Lee at CARE explains, ChatGPT and other AI models sometimes contribute to this exclusion, reinforcing societal biases that limit women’s potential for business growth and long-term financial health. She shares insights from CARE's attempt to build a women-centered design GPT — and proposes some practical steps AI users can take to mitigate bias against women when working with mainstream GPTs.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology