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Press Release: MCE Social Capital Receives $3.7 Million Grant
Capital infusion will fund more loans to small and growing businesses in rural Africa and other emerging markets, and serve as a match to attract new guarantors.
- Categories
- Investing
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Investing from the ‘Frontier of the Frontier’: Lessons from Ten Years as an Investment Advisor in Africa
With six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies, Africa is an attractive target for investors. But investing there doesn’t always come easy. Ten years ago, Andreas Zeller moved to Nairobi and co-founded Open Capital Advisors, which helps investors access African markets, and helps African businesses become investment-ready. In this interview, Zeller discusses how development and donor agencies can remove the barriers to investment throughout the continent.
- Categories
- Investing
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‘Failing to Win’ as a Social Entrepreneur: A Q&A with Zoona Co-Founder Mike Quinn
Mike Quinn had no savings when he co-founded Zoona in Zambia in 2009. He also had $50,000 in student debt. During an early cash crisis, he had to ask his retired parents to mortgage their house and wire him $100,000. Yet he and his co-founders built Zoona into one of Africa’s first fintech success stories before Quinn stepped away last year. In this Q&A – the first in our series “The Untold Stories of Social Entrepreneurs” – he discusses the lessons he learned from Zoona’s successes and failures.
- Categories
- Finance, Social Enterprise
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Seven Stages of SME Growth – One Common Problem: The Challenge of Financing Small Businesses Across Their Life Cycle
There’s an endless variety of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the world, but these businesses often experience similar problems that arise at similar stages in their growth. Barbara Peitsch, an international economic development consultant at the William Davidson Institute, discusses these stages and their associated challenges, and explores how SMEs can access financing that's appropriate for their level of development.
- Categories
- Finance
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New Partnership to Drive Off-Grid Solar Energy Enterprises in Africa
VentureBuilder and the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) have announced their partnership to support the development of off-grid solar energy enterprises that can meet the demands of underserved populations in Africa.
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- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sizing the ‘Grey Economy’: Using Geospatial Data to Uncover the True Extent of the MSME Sector in Emerging Markets
The micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector is a major employer in many emerging economies – but exactly how big? And how many jobs is it producing? According to Obert Maposa at FinMark Trust, those are hard questions to answer – but advancements in technology and geospatial data modeling are improving our understanding of the sector. He explores how FinMark Trust has leveraged these tools in Malawi, and why the model holds promise for other countries.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- business development, data, MSMEs, research
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Africa’s Tech Startup ‘Investment Frenzy’: Fact, Fantasy – or a Wakeup Call for Better Investing Strategies?
Are Africa's tech startups really facing an "investment frenzy" that's driving excessive valuations, growth-at-all-cost business models and unrealistic investor expectations? That was impact investor Lauren Cochran's argument in a much-discussed NextBillion article. But according to Marsha Wulff at LoftyInc Capital Management, the problem isn't an excess of funding – it's "group-think" among foreign investors who don't see the true value of local, African-led startups.
- Categories
- Investing
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A Future Beyond Short-Term Profit: A Movement Builds for Mission-First Business Structures
Business as usual is not working to solve major world problems—in many cases it’s actually causing them, due to flaws built into the foundation of conventional business and investing structures. Jasper van Brakel of RSF Social Finance discusses how this realization is sparking a grassroots global movement behind mission-first business, rooted in stakeholder governance and seeking profit as an engine for creating social, cultural and ecological good.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise