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‘The Marketmakers’ – How Rural Bangladesh Became a Model for Solar Enterprise
It took just a decade for more than 15 million villagers to gain access to the benefits of solar home systems in Bangladesh. How did this happen? Nancy Wimmer explains the process in her new book, "The Marketmakers — Solar for the Hinterland of Bangladesh." While Bangladesh's success would be difficult to replicate in other countries, Wimmer is convinced it is not solely determined by a country or product. Rather, she says it stems from a market-oriented approach carried out by rural entrepreneurs, as well as the leadership and resources to see it through.
- Categories
- Energy
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How Artificial Intelligence Can Simplify International Development Research: An Intriguing Experiment (Involving NextBillion)
International development professionals must often spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with news, trends and research about their area of activity – and this requires a lot of manual labor. But much of this can now be automated and aided by artificial intelligence (AI). Jacob Rosen and Ashirul Amin at BFA explore how they used AI to sort and categorize a vast amount of development-focused content online, using NextBillion's 5,000+ article library as a test case. The results of their experiment show how AI can help people reduce time and labor and learn more efficiently.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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India’s Demographic Dividend: The Impact Opportunity in Student-Led Social Business
India's social enterprise sector is growing fast, but its overall startup ecosystem doesn’t support social businesses as much it does “commercial” enterprises. And the support it does offer tends to be directed toward larger, more established companies, hampering the sector's broader growth. According to Geet Kalra at Yunus Social Business and Nandan Luthra at Novartis, India can turn this around by leveraging its huge youth population to build multiple small enterprises, through a model called student-led social business. They discuss the potential impact of this innovative approach.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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New Thinking to Advance Gender Equality: ‘Radical Collaboration’ in Action
"We don’t want to wait centuries or even decades to achieve equality for all women everywhere. We want it now." Alexa Blain, co-founder and Managing Partner at Deetken Impact, recently attended the Women Deliver conference where, along with a decent dose of inspiration, she and her colleagues discovered that a bold, collaborative approach could hold the key to unlocking empowerment efforts.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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MSMEs Are the Backbone of Developing Economies: New Research Shows How Digital Platforms Can Boost Their Impact
To keep pace with the growing youth population, 600 million new jobs must be created globally over the next 15 years. Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) will be key to that effort, say Alina Kaiser at Caribou Digital and Annabel Schiff at the Mastercard Foundation’s FiDA Partnership. They explore how digital platforms can boost MSMEs in emerging markets, based on learnings from 27 micro-entrepreneurs in Kenya.
- Categories
- Technology
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Beyond ‘Take-Make-Waste’ Supply Chains: MIT Solve Seeks Circular Economy Solutions
Most of the products we use today — clothing, furniture, electronics and more — come from “take-make-waste” linear supply chains. These systems result in 2 billion tons of solid waste each year, produce major carbon emissions, and often involve toxic working conditions. MIT Solve is seeking new models through its Circular Economy Challenge, which will give $10,000 grants to the eight most promising solutions - the application deadline is July 1.
- Categories
- Environment, Transportation
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Creating an Inclusive Fintech Ecosystem? Here Are Three Facts Accelerators Should Consider
BFA's Catalyst Fund started with one goal: to support early-stage inclusive fintech entrepreneurs in developing accessible, high-quality and relevant financial solutions for the underserved. After three years of operations, the accelerator has worked with 20 startups across 13 emerging markets, helping to create better credit, payment, insurance, savings and investment solutions that improve the financial health of people with low incomes. Maelis Carraro and Rasima Swarup at BFA share some of the fund's lessons on how to build an inclusive fintech network.
- Tags
- fintech
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Moving Beyond Credit: Why Savings Should Take Center Stage in Digital Financial Inclusion
As mobile money continues to overtake traditional banking in emerging markets, putting financial services within reach of the unbanked, credit remains front and center in the conversation. But Buhle Goslar at JUMO says it's time to focus on an important yet underutilized tool that could help promote a well-rounded, healthy financial life for excluded customers – savings. She details how new tech and training programs can go beyond simple access and towards a new culture of savings.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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