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Weekly Roundup – The Indispensable Platform: The growing importance of mobile access to businesses that serve the poor
With over 50 percent of people in the developing world having access to a cell phone, mobile access has become an indispensable platform for businesses and services focused on the BoP. We discuss its impact and potential in this week’s Roundup.
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- Agriculture, Education, Energy, Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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Cashless Education: How mobile money helps Bridge International Academies deliver quality for-profit education for $6 a month – Part 5 in our Digital Finance Plus series
Bridge International Academies has integrated mobile money fully into its business. All of the school’s 300+ branches accept no cash, using mobile money for school fees, student lunch purchases, payments to staff and vendors, and expense reimbursements. In part 5 of our Digital Finance Plus series, Marie Leznicki explains how going cashless helps Bridge maintain its customer focus.
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- Education, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Leveraging Loyalty: How m.Paani is mobilizing BoP consumer behavior for social good – Part 4 of our Digital Finance Plus series
Whether they’re frequent flyer miles or credit card rewards points, loyalty programs are a mutually beneficial way for companies to build relationships with customers. m.Paani is using digital finance tools to take that model in a new direction, by connecting BoP households’ commercial and social behaviors to points that can be redeemed for socially beneficial rewards.
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- Health Care, Impact Assessment, Technology
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Can Digital Currencies Change the World?: Bitcoin is a tech-savvy alternative to traditional payment systems, but could it meet the needs of the financially excluded?
Riding on the Bitcoin hype, a legion of techno-optimists believes that digital crypto-currencies have the potential to transform ineffective global payment systems, and ultimately spur global financial inclusion. But will digital currencies such as Bitcoin truly change the global payment infrastructure and bring financial access to millions?
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- Technology
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Scaling Mobile for Development: Strengthening the business case for social enterprises, including those delivering health care
The developing world is rapidly gaining access to mobile phones, but still lags in services key to development. This gap presents an opportunity for social entrepreneurs, impact investors, NGOs and mobile operators who would like to achieve positive social impact through commercially viable businesses.
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- Education, Health Care, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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NextThought Monday: Three Assumptions You Should Avoid When Working with the BoP
My goal in Villa El Salvador — an urban, residential district on the outskirts of a desert area in Lima —was to supervise a focus group with inhabitants of this neighborhood that will be part of a broader study that IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority is developing as part of its 2014 knowledge production strategy. Many of participants in the focus group surprised me with some of their answers, as they went against many of my rooted preconceptions.
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- Finance, Technology
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‘Mobile Midwife’ Empowers Ghanaian Women: Phone apps provide key information during different stages of pregnancy
Almost everyone in Ghana has a mobile phone subscription. That led a to a collaborative initiative to use cell phones to increase the quantity and quality of prenatal and neonatal care in rural Ghana and improve health outcomes for mothers and their newborns.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Can You Hear Me Yet?: mHealth breakthroughs not increasing as fast as the possibilities
How could mobile phones be even more important in the future, if most of the world already has one? Because one day soon they’ll be put to their highest use: saving millions of lives.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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