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‘Connectivity is Productivity’: Iqbal Quadir at the BASE II Forum on tech for transformation
The recent BASE Forum featured several distinguished panelists, including Iqbal Quadir, founder and director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, and founder of Grameenphone. He discussed how technology can support the BoP’s capacity to improve their own work productivity and daily lives.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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NexThought Monday – Want to Help Africa’s SMEs? Improve Their Internet Access: A new report from Dalberg highlights the Web’s huge social and economic potential
As part of Dalberg’s Impact of the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Study, a recent survey by Dalberg Research shows just how important the Internet is to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa. African policymakers–already concerned with SMEs as an engine for growth and job creation–may do well to prioritize Internet access and use among SMEs.
- Categories
- Education, Technology, Telecommunications
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Mobile Money in Tanzania: Understanding consumers’ perspectives
After stagnating during the first two waves of our research, mobile money use among Tanzanian adults nearly doubled over the course of the study. Poor, rural women were consistently the least likely to use mobile money, while urban men above the poverty line were the most likely. However, we found that gender does not play as large a role in mobile money use as might be expected.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Avoiding the Generation Gap : Young people and financial access, going beyond mobile money
For many young people, owning a phone is aspirational and closely tied to their self-esteem. The surge of young people with phones or phone access and the emergence of low-cost mobile banking technology suggests that it may be timely to engage them in accessing digital financial services and building their financial capabilities.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Africa’s Microinsurance Maze: Early trial-and-error efforts could lead to coverage for 1 billion in 2013
Insurers, mobile-phone companies and behind-the-scenes administrators also involved have learned that mobile networks and microinsurance are potentially a great fit. The challenge for the future is getting people to pay.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Socially Contagious: How Microclinic International is Spreading Healthy Behaviors
Whether you’re buying shoes or making health-related decisions, your behavior is influenced by those around you. That’s the premise behind Microclinic International, which uses social networks to make good health contagious.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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A Growing Lifeline: Mobile Technologies in Agricultural Development
For farmers, mobile devices can deliver services that help them improve their production, such as weather information and technical advice. For buyers, data delivered via mobile can increase their insight into volumes harvested and processed by farmers and their organizations during the cycle.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology, Telecommunications
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The PeaceTXT Proposition: Stopping violence with an SMS
PeaceTXT: a global mash-up of social innovators, software designers and information technologists (to name a few) collaborating on mobile technology’s potential to prevent violence. The collaboration, spearheaded by PopTech, is aiming to create the first broadly available tested methodologies and technical platforms for using mobile phones to disrupt violence and engender more peaceful communities.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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