Latest
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Finding Value in Food Losses and Byproducts: Why Circular Agribusiness is Key to Sustainable Food Security in Africa
Food waste and spoilage are major problems in Africa: For example, between 25% and 44% of mangoes are lost across the value chain in Kenya. Brenda Wangari at Village Capital and Patrick Guyer at Bopinc discuss an innovative solution to this challenge: circular agribusinesses that turn food waste and byproducts into affordable, nutritious foods and organic fertilizers. They explain how the O-Farms program, Africa’s first accelerator focusing entirely on circular agribusiness, is supporting these enterprises, and how this approach can help ensure food security on the continent.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
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The Leapfrog Opportunity in ‘Know Your Customer’ Innovation: Why Africa Needs Local, Digitized KYC Solutions
Know Your Customer (KYC) is a critical process for banks, as it enables them to validate their customers’ identities to fulfill regulatory requirements and protect against fraud. But as Timbo Drayson at OkHi explains, KYC is a big and expensive problem in Africa: For instance, in Nigeria some banks are spending up to $1 million per year to manually verify identities, and 15-30% of customers never complete these processes. He explores three key challenges to KYC in Africa, and presents some tech-driven solutions that could allow the continent to leapfrog to a new global best practice for KYC.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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A Roadmap for Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Island Nations: Three Success Factors for the Eastern Caribbean’s Transition from Fossil Fuels
The Eastern Caribbean has struggled in recent years, as natural disasters – combined with the COVID-19 pandemic – have caused a precipitous drop in the tourism revenues it depends on. But as Pepukaye Bardouille at the IFC explains, transitioning to renewable energy could help address this challenge, reducing the region’s cost of electricity, supporting its climate resilience, limiting its dependence on imported fossil fuels, and producing jobs outside the tourism sector. She presents three success factors for achieving this transition – insights that could also be applicable to other island nations.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing
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Pushing the Water Boundaries: How Social Impact Incentives Can Make WASH Enterprises More Innovative, Impactful and Catalytic
The water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector is ripe for change, as it is far from being on track to achieve universal access to safe drinking water (SDG 6). According to Shabana Abbas at Aqua for All, and Bjoern Struewer and Patrizia Baffioni at Roots of Impact, impact entrepreneurs can drive the sector forward, but their funders will need to move away from the usual grant models to explore more innovative and sustainable financing approaches. They discuss one such model – Social Impact Incentives – and how it's being applied successfully to support WASH enterprises.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Finance, WASH
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Sustainable Solutions for the World’s Failing Food Systems: Acceso’s CEO Discusses its Innovative Approach
The war in Ukraine has weakened global food systems that were already reeling from the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic – not to mention the escalating climate crisis. In this interview, Acceso CEO James Jenkin discusses how his organization is responding to that urgent need by taking an innovative, market-driven, farmer-focused approach to what’s becoming one of the most critical challenges of our time.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
