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Three Questions for Five African Businesses: Insights from Sankalp Africa Summit’s ‘Enterprise Showcase’
The recent Sankalp Africa Summit featured an “Enterprise Showcase” where up-and-coming African businesses shared information about their work and missions. NextBillion interviewed five of these entrepreneurs and company representatives, asking each of them three questions: What are the main challenges you’re facing in running your business? What kind of support would help you overcome these challenges? And what’s one thing you wish funders understood about your business needs? Their responses reveal some of the innovative approaches and key issues that are emerging in Africa’s vibrant ecosystem of small and medium-sized enterprises.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Transportation, WASH
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Accelerating Climate-Health: How the Sector Can Become Africa’s Next Strategic Investment Frontier
Africa faces a growing dual challenge at the critical nexus of climate and healthcare, as countries and health systems that are already strained by chronic underinvestment must now also deal with climate-related shocks and disease burdens. As Rajat Chabba at the William Davidson Institute and Martin Slawek at Open Capital Advisors explain, without targeted investment in integrated climate-health solutions, these health systems risk becoming overwhelmed, undermining public health and climate resilience across the region. But they also argue that these pressures create a clear opportunity for investors, businesses, and public and development-sector players. They explore why climate-health presents a compelling investment case in Africa.
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- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing
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The Hidden Role of ‘E-Boiling’ in Clean Cooking: How Nairobi’s Informal Settlements are Quietly Powering an Electric Transition
As policymakers and funders look for ways to bring clean cooking to Africa’s urban poor, one key reality often goes unnoticed: Electric cooking is already happening in the continent’s informal settlements, just not in the way most people think. June Lukuyu, Nathan Williams, Vongaishe Mutatu, Austine Owuor Otieno, Paul Kyoma Asiimwe and Vijay Modi share findings from their research in Nairobi, which reveal a growing use of electricity for boiling water to cook, make tea, bathe, and sterilize food and drinking water. They argue that this adoption of “e-boiling” offers an entry point for expanding electricity usage in these communities, and explore the implications for clean cooking programs.
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- Energy, Environment
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Productive Use Has Challenges: What’s Holding the Sector Back — And How Companies and Investors Should Respond
Productive use of renewable energy (PURE) technologies such as solar irrigation, cold storage and agro-processing can have a transformative impact in Africa and other emerging markets. But though the potential of these technologies is undeniable, the scale isn’t. As Daniel Waldron, Chris Emmott and Kristi Chon at Acumen, and Duda Slawek at Open Capital explain, few agricultural companies are delivering PURE solutions, and fewer still are growing fast enough to meet the scope of the problems they are trying to solve. They share new research and analysis that illuminate the challenges that are holding the sector back, and propose three ways forward.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Announcing the Winners of Our Annual Contest
We've counted the votes in NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest, an annual tradition since 2012. The three winners are listed in this article. Congratulations to these guest writers, and to the other contestants in the contest, whose insights have clearly resonated with our readers this past year. And thank you to everyone who voted — and everyone who read and wrote for NextBillion in 2025. Best wishes for the new year!
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- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications
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Announcing NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Vote for Your Favorites by Jan. 4
NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest has been an annual tradition since 2012. As we do each December, we’ve highlighted 12 of our most-read articles from the past year: You can find links to them in this article, or on the homepage below. We invite you to read them and vote for the ones that influenced your thinking the most. You can vote up to once per hour between today (Dec. 19) and 11:59 pm EST on Jan. 4. We thank you for your support and engagement over these past 20 years, and we wish you a happy and prosperous 2026.
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- Energy, Environment, Finance, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation
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African Agriculture at a Climate Crossroads: Business Risks and Opportunities as the Continent Navigates the Growing Crisis
Africa’s food systems are under mounting pressure from climate change, as droughts, erratic rainfall, floods and heat waves increasingly undermine both crop and livestock production. But as Asamoah Oppong Zadok at Sustaina Harvest explains, despite the emergence of climate-smart innovations and resilience-focused initiatives, many stakeholders still prioritize short-term fixes and reactive crisis spending that leave deeper vulnerabilities intact. He argues that African agriculture faces a choice: remain trapped in a cycle of repeated shocks and emergency responses — or invest in technologies, ecosystems and people that can turn climate risk into opportunity, building healthy ecosystems and inclusive livelihoods over the long term.
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- Agriculture, Environment
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Context Instead of Carbon: Why Climate Finance in Africa Must Shift its Focus from Mitigation to Adaptation
Global climate action has long been framed through a binary lens: either mitigation or adaptation. As Sheena Raikundalia at Kuza One explains, this framework shapes how funding flows, how projects are designed and even how “success” is measured: Mitigation attracts the bulk of funding because it produces measurable carbon outcomes and enables high-emitting countries to meet their net-zero targets, while adaptation's local benefits are harder to quantify, commodify or sell. She argues that this imbalance risks turning African landscapes into carbon farms for the Global North, and also obscures the fact that many of Africa’s most climate-smart solutions could be promising investments — if the current financing architecture would support them. NOTE: In celebration of our 20th anniversary, NextBillion is highlighting key guest articles from our two decades online. We’re currently focusing on the healthcare sector: You can read these featured articles below.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Investing
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