NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

NextBillion’s “Most Influential Article of the Year” contest ended yesterday, and after tallying the votes, we’re excited to announce the three winners, as selected by our readers:

First Place

Where the ‘New Formal’ is the New Normal: Lessons on Innovation from India’s Artisan Economy

Priya Krishnamoorthy and Aparna Subramanyam at 200 Million Artisans and Anandana Kapur at the Harvard Kennedy School examine the lack of support for informal creative businesses, suggesting ways to empower these enterprises and the communities they serve.

Second Place

Savings-Led Digital Finance: The Dawn of a New Era?

Philip Acton and Finn Tiedemann at DreamStart Labs Inc. explore growing concerns about the risky practices used by some digital lenders, and argue that one solution may come from a new generation of “savings-led” digital finance apps.

Third Place

Can Access to Smartphones Bridge the Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Amani M’Bale at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Graham A.N. Wright at MicroSave (MSC) discuss several factors that can increase — or limit — the usage of smartphones and other mobile devices in sub-Saharan Africa.

Congratulations to the winners and their organizations! And many thanks to the other contestants, to all our guest writers from the past year – and also to the unsung heroes: the comms teams that play a key role in facilitating many of our articles. We’re looking forward to hearing more from these writers in 2023 – and from other entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and others tackling business challenges in emerging markets. As always, we welcome you to contact us if you’d like to submit an original guest article of your own, or a press release, calendar event or job post.

Best wishes for the new year!

James Militzer is the managing editor of NextBillion.