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Mobile Money Meets Microcredit: Three Key Decisions in Taking a Concept from Design to Pilot
SAJIDA Foundation in Bangladesh is using evidence from data analytics, business case analysis and client research to improve cross-selling as part of the OPTIX project. Three key evidence-based programmatic decisions were necessary to take a new mobile financial service-based microfinance initiative from the design table to being piloted in the field.
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- Finance
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India vs. Pakistan: The Pros and Cons of Two Radically Different Digital ID Systems
India’s digital identification system, Aadhaar, has registered nearly 80 percent of India’s 1.3 billion citizens. Just across the border, Pakistan's NADRA system has issued 120 million identities among the country's 180 million citizens. Both systems give citizens an ID and can give them access to both government and commercial services, yet they are radically different. Which approach provides the best model for other countries?
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- Technology
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Weekly Roundup: Preventing Zika, Improving Microfinance and Percolating Progress
It’s not too early to start thinking of creative differential pricing strategies that might help poor people afford a Zika vaccine; it's not too late for microfinance to regain some of the allure it's lost in recent years; and the time is just right for East Africa to up its coffee production game. Read all about these items, and more, in our Weekly Roundup.
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- Uncategorized
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How the Securing Water for Food Challenge Seeded My Social Enterprise
In 2013, Reel Gardening applied for and won funding from Securing Water for Food (SWFF) – which helps accelerate technology-based solutions that enable more food to be produced with less water in developing countries – and that money proved to be pivotal in the social enterprise's success. SWFF is funding more innovators this year; the deadline to apply is Monday.
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- Agriculture
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- lending, partnerships
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The G2P Silver Bullet? Not So Fast.
Many governments offer cash transfers to millions of people at or below the poverty line, most of whom are not connected to the formal financial system. If these cash transfers are funneled into bank accounts rather than paid directly out in cash, these people immediately gain an on-ramp to financial services. But there is a resounding dissonance between enthusiasm for this solution, and the evidence to date.
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- Uncategorized
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Beyond Imagination: GE, Miller Center Helping Keep Moms, Children Healthy
A pilot called healthymagination Mother and Child – a unique partnership between Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, based in Silicon Valley, and GE, which is investing $20 million in the joint venture – accelerates much-needed medical innovations in nine countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Weekly Roundup: PSI for Profit, a Slowing ‘Pulse’ in Africa and Medical Tourism on Steroids
The non-profit Population Services International (PSI) announces the launch of a for-profit business in India, sub-Saharan Africa braces for "the lowest growth in more than 20 years," and Obamacare generates some unintended – and potentially exciting – consequences. We discuss these and other issues in our weekly roundup of social business and global development news.
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- Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Who Pays and What Works? The Changing Market of Inclusive Business Development Services
There are more development services for inclusive businesses than ever before. But how effective are they and what still needs to be done to improve the market? The Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business and the Inclusive Business Accelerator have been exploring these questions and more in a new series.
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- Uncategorized
