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How the Arab World Can Build a Tech Sector of its Own
Unemployment in MENA is 10.3 percent, according to the International Labor Organization, the highest anywhere in the world. That rate grows to 23.8 percent for those between the ages of 15 and 25. But where should youth turn to look for meaningful jobs? Maybe the same place they turned to stage protests against their governments: online.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Turning Poop into Profits: Waste Enterprisers Drive to Turn Waste Outputs into Fuel Inputs
If Ashley Murray has something to say about it, the economics of poop are in for a shake-up. “85 percent of human waste generated on the planet is dumped directly into the environment without any treatment at all,” she said. Murray, founder and CEO of Waste Enterprisers and a Fellow at this year’s Unreasonable Institute, believes that waste can be transformed into fuel.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- waste
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Weekly Roundup: Flushed – Is This Any Way to Crowdsource a Social Enterprise?
On Tuesday, founder and CEO of Good Goods, took a seat on the throne and didn’t get off until 50 hours later - all while under the watchful eye of a webcam. By then Simmon Griffiths and company had raised more than $50,000 in pre-orders to fund the first bulk production run of Good Goods’ new line of toilet paper: ‘Who Gives A Crap’. Working with WaterAid, the company plans to dedicate 50 percent of the paper’s profits to build toilets and improve sanitation in developing countries.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Weekly Roundup: Bringing Broadband to the BoP and Other Insights From OMJ’s BoP Week
Like housing, expanding broadband requires close collaboration with public and private stakeholders, and a willingness to build trust across them. Building that trust was part of the mission of the Opportunities for the Majority’s Strategic Partners Dialogue, which brought together government officials, financers, NGOs, and, of course, entrepreneurs to discuss how policy innovation can be a catalyst for market-based solutions to poverty in both broadband and housing.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Scratch it Off the Public Health Wish-list: A menu of IT solutions for global health challenges
Observing the widespread use of ICT, coupled with intense interest from the global health community—witness, a few of my colleagues at the Center for Health Market Innovations set out to figure out why programs used technology. To answer this question, they analyzed more than 600 programs in over 100 countries—the contents of CHMI’s database at the time. Their findings, published in this month’s WHO Bulletin, highlight six key reasons health program managers adopt ICT.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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In Telemedicine, Often Old Habits Prove Bigger Challenge Than Technology Hurdles
In the rural town of Juvvalapalem, most residents seek the local Rural Medical Practitioners (also known as quacks) when they need medical treatment. This is just one of the challenges we’re dealing with at GloCare, an initiative to provide market-driven quality healthcare solutions to underserved populations through telemedicine.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Will Lower Mobile Money Fees in Kenya, Tanzania be Enough to Stimulate Micropayments?
Many cite the high cost of electronic transfers as a key market barrier to leveraging mobile money platforms and enabling retail payments or other financial services to the poor. (See a previous post on that subject here). But recently, two leading mobile money providers in Kenya and Tanzania lowered their prices for small-value transfers.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Unleashing Innovation: The Story Behind the Low-Cost Incubator ‘Embrace’
As some of the world’s leading social innovators come together this week at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, Link TV’s ViewChange project is looking at some of the most exciting social innovations taking place around the world. Guest Writer Linus Liang, COO of Embrace, shares the story on the low-cost incubator.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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