-
Meat Every Day: How a Rwandan Entrepreneur Aims to Satisfy Africa’s Changing Appetites
Some predict that, by the end of the century, 13 African cities will surpass New York City in population. As African economies grow and their citizens become more urbanized, their standards of living and meat consumption are also likely to increase. This shift will reshape the continent's agriculture industry – and entrepreneurs like Herve Tuyishime are responding. Tuyishime explains how his two interrelated businesses are helping satisfy Africans' growing appetite for meat, and bringing Rwandan farmers into the supply chain.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
-
Up to 2.5 Billion People Need Glasses: Can This Hardware Innovation Deliver?
Roughly 25 percent of the global population needs glasses, but lacks access. The problem isn't cost: Affordable glasses are readily available in emerging markets. What's lacking are trained eye care specialists. The social startup PlenOptika is tackling that issue with a device called the QuickSee: a binocular-sized autorefractor that non-specialists can use to scan a patient’s eyes and produce an eyeglass prescription within seconds. Paul Scott, director of engineering for ASME, discusses the innovation, and the challenges and rewards of running a social hardware startup.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- partnerships
-
The Funder Problem: Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
Despite their good intentions, funders are often the biggest barriers to social enterprises or nonprofits achieving impact. Open Road Alliance, a philanthropic initiative that gives emergency grants to impact-focused organizations, gathered and analyzed five years of data about roadblocks faced by over 100 grantees. Nearly half of the problems the group found were caused by funders. Laurie Michaels describes the three categories of funder-related barriers that account for the most frequent challenges – and offers some surprisingly easy fixes.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
-
Making the Case for Early-Stage Impact Investing
In many emerging markets, social entrepreneurs are financing their ventures with personal funds and high-interest loans - mainly because it's so tough to grow out of the startup phase without being able to show financial returns. The nonprofit Beyond Capital Fund provides pro bono advisory services to help investee enterprises establish and implement operating procedures and regular impact reporting systems, writes CEO Eva Yazhari. She explains how these formalized structures lend credibility and stability to sustain the businesses and attract potential investors - functions that are often lacking in the impact investing ecosystem.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
-
Cutting Edge Agriculture: How Artificial Intelligence, Satellites and Big Data are Transforming Farmers’ Access to Finance
There are many reasons for the $450 billion global agricultural finance gap. But much of the challenge stems from lenders' inability to monitor farmers' output, estimate their income and assess their risk of default, says Ruchit G Garg of Harvesting Inc. He explores how artificial intelligence and satellites are addressing that data imbalance, helping lenders reach many of the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers for the first time.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology, Telecommunications
-
Hardware Innovation is … Hard: How These Entrepreneurs Overcame the Challenges
Compared with the creators of app-based products, hardware-focused innovators face a much more difficult and expensive journey, says Villgro CTO Arun Venkatesan. The resources and time required to perfect hardware iterations are larger, the lack of a mature ecosystem is a problem, and the buyer is often distinctly different from the user or beneficiary. Venkatesan profiles four hardware innovators in agriculture and health care, discussing how they worked through these obstacles.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
-
Show Me the Money: How Much Do Accelerators Really Help Entrepreneurs Raise?
Do accelerators really help social entrepreneurs raise more money for their businesses? Studies from the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative suggest the answer is yes, in both emerging markets and high-income countries – but their effectiveness varies greatly. Stephanie Buck of ANDE explores valuable insights from the research that can help optimize accelerators' impact.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
-
More College = Less Poverty: The Impact of Peer-to-Peer Lending
More than 57 million students globally are qualified but have not enrolled in higher education, mostly because they lack the money. Yet banks often don't want to lend to them, due to their lack of collateral, uncertain earning potential and long repayment periods. That’s why Ryker Labbee and Kirk Acevedo launched peer-to-peer student lender Zomia, targeting nearly 1 million potential college students in Myanmar and Cambodia. They explore how the model could scale into other markets and reduce poverty.
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.