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The New Face of Poverty: Why Unemployment isn’t the Issue – And How Financial Inclusion Can Help
When you think about poverty, what does it look like? Many people might picture an undernourished African child, or an elderly beggar sitting in the street. But as Oakam CEO Frederic Nze explains, the reality can be far different. Poverty today often involves the struggles of the working poor, and it’s defined less by extreme deprivation and more by lack of access – to clean water, to power, to basic education, and increasingly to the internet. Nze explores the implications of this shift for the financial inclusion and development sectors.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
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Accelerating Energy Access in India: New Research Highlights Keys to Developing a Nascent Industry
India’s clean energy industry is growing fast. But the challenges facing enterprises there – and the lessons they are learning – are neither unique to the clean energy industry nor to India. In fact, says Colm Fay at the William Davidson Institute, recent research suggests that India’s clean energy sector is following patterns that can be observed in any nascent industry. He explores how existing knowledge about how industries develop can help guide investment, and provide some clues about what the sector’s future may hold.
- Categories
- Energy
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Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
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- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
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Why Social Entrepreneurship is Vital to the SDGs: 15 Award-Winning Entrepreneurs Share their Insights
In recent months, the global development sector has faced some unwelcome news: The world is not on track to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But there is still cause for optimism: The ongoing growth of social business points to possible ways to overcome this slow progress. Mark Horoszowski, CEO of MovingWorlds.org, met with award-winning social entrepreneurs from around the world at the recent SOCAP conference, and asked them how entrepreneurship can help achieve the SDGs. Their responses, compiled here, highlight many of the reasons the sector is moving to the forefront of the global development agenda.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- global development, SDGs
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Education + Technology = Equality: An Innovative Learning Platform Aims to Go International
All children deserve an equal education, and most people agree on that goal. Yet globally, tens of millions of children are not in school, and many schools struggle to retain qualified teachers. Suren Aloyan founded the social enterprise Dasaran to address these issues in Armenia, through an online platform that offers interactive learning content and communication and assessment tools to schools, parents and students. Aloyan explores the impact the platform has generated so far – and discusses its plans to scale up.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- global development, SDGs
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Financing the Energy Access Revolution: Three Technologies That Are Driving Africa’s Momentum
Technology has become central to the energy access story in Africa. It’s an essential part of all the key stages of an enterprise’s work – from raising the initial capital and financing the equipment, to designing and delivering the final product itself. And the new possibilities opened up by technology are increasingly seen as potential game-changers, in a region where some 590 million Africans – around 50 percent of the population – are still without access to electricity. Ben Good, the CEO of Energy 4 Impact, explores three areas in which tech-driven approaches – from crowdfunding to cryptocurrency – are making an impact.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Running Out of Gas: Can This Innovative Solar and Battery Electric Generator Fight Energy Poverty – And Climate Change?
The electric generator market is predicted to grow to US $27 billion by 2023. But as the industry grows, so too will the need for fuel to power it – a major challenge in a world struggling to reduce carbon emissions and climate change. Portable Electric believes it has found a solution: a portable generator that can be powered by solar and wind to provide completely renewable, mobile energy – at three times the efficiency of traditional generators. The company's founder, Mark Rabin discusses the technology, and its uses in everything from micro-grids to disaster relief.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
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Big Problem, Small Solution: Can Do-It-Yourself Processing Machines Help Combat Plastic Pollution?
From the viral video of a diver swimming in a sea of plastic, to National Geographic’s major focus on the topic this year, there’s growing public attention on the problem of plastic waste. So there was plenty of excitement when a Dutch engineer’s do-it-yourself plastic recycling machines started gaining traction around the world. Could the devices empower a global army of small entrepreneurs to turn plastic waste into revenue-generating products? The solution sounds appealing, but when Bali-based social enterprise Kopernik assessed its effectiveness, they came across one small problem.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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