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Why Sustainable Food is Key to Impact Investing in China
Tao Zhang founded one of China’s first impact investing vehicles for environmental SMEs, with a focus on the industrial sector. But he realized that there's a pressing environmental issue brewing at the consumer level – a demand for animal products increasing in tandem with rising incomes, bringing greater greenhouse gas emissions and health disparities. Zhang shares how his Dao Ventures consortium is making consumers part of the solution by partnering with other impact finance entities to boost the availability of – and appetite for – alternative protein sources.
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- Environment, Investing
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Diverse Pathways to Women’s Economic Empowerment: Stories from Three Local Leaders on International Women’s Day
We often think of women’s economic empowerment as focused on achieving material goals like income, credit and jobs. But true empowerment is much more complex, says Mara Bolis, Senior Advisor on Market Systems at Oxfam America. She explores three key conditions that enable economic empowerment, using examples from three women she met in a recent Oxfam visit to Cambodia – a fitting topic for discussion this International Women's Day.
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- Uncategorized
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Seeing the Road Ahead: Women in the Driver’s Seat for Change
Esenam Nyador knows it’s not enough to just give women opportunities in the male-dominated taxi business in Ghana. She’s focused on shifting the mindsets of taxi companies, male drivers and the general public to build an inclusive environment for females to thrive – not just to drive. Nyador is one of several women profiled by Jennifer Vogt, Innovation Manager at Ashoka Social Financial Services. As we near International Women’s Day, Vogt showcases several women who are not only challenging male-dominated workplaces, but the entire systems enabling them.
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- Technology, Transportation
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Freeing the Data to Build the Off-Grid Energy Sector: A Case Study from Tanzania
Mini-grids and solar home systems are showing promise in many parts of Tanzania and other countries. But Christopher Arderne at the World Bank and Pepukaye Bardouille at the IFC flag a key challenge: Lack of coordination and information-sharing between government and the private sector means off-grid developers may target sites that will become grid-connected before they can recover their investments. Arderne and Bardouille share some free new data tools that blend local participation and infrastructure mapping to help off-grid players avoid this risk.
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- Energy, Technology
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Still Waiting for a Seat at the Table: When Will Global Family Planning Focus on Smaller Private Providers?
The family planning community is not on track to reach its goal of 120 million new contraception users by 2020. And though millions of women in the world’s poorest countries rely on private providers for contraception, Andrea Bare at the William Davidson Institute notes that the private sector lacks a major presence in global family planning discussions. She says this needs to change, arguing that small, for-profit providers in particular can help close the gap.
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- Health Care
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Daring to Think Big: Why It’s Time to Scale Impact-Linked Finance
The 2030 deadline for reaching Sustainable Development Goal targets may sound far off, but for German-based impact advisory firm Roots of Impact, the “SDG financing abyss” is an urgent issue. Three of the organization's leaders say financing the SDGs will require new approaches to investing, including impact-linked finance – a merging of blended finance, impact investing and results-based finance. They lay out a blueprint for accelerating impact-related finance by incorporating outcome funds, utilizing technologies like blockchain and other strategies in this illuminating post.
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The Promise (and the Absence) of EdTech: Why Countries Aren’t Adopting It More Widely – And What Can Be Done
Despite decades of promises and false starts, consistent, large-scale EdTech programs to address under-skilled or absent teachers remain frustratingly elusive in many emerging economies. Why are local Ministries of Education – and donors from rich countries – reluctant to embrace nationwide programs to address teacher gaps through technology? Dalberg analysts are asking the question, and the answers may lie in a lack of actionable evidence.
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- Education, Impact Assessment, Technology
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Why Health Benefits Could Drive Customer Value for Solar Lighting and Clean Cookstoves
Solar lighting and improved cookstoves have multiple benefits. But according to a new FINCA International survey of end-users in Uganda, the benefits customers value most involve the products' perceived contributions to a cleaner, healthier household. Scott Graham and Anahit Tevosyan at FINCA explore how highlighting these benefits can help product manufacturers and distributors – and the donors and investors who support them – to strengthen the uptake and usage of off-grid products.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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