-
Fintech or Die: Five Ways Microfinance Can (and Must) Respond to the Digital Age
MicroSave founder Graham Wright hasn't been shy in criticizing the ways lenders are currently leveraging fintech to serve low-income clients. But his views on its potential in microfinance are far more bullish than this criticism might suggest. "Very soon, if MFIs don't develop a strategy and implement fintech behind that strategy, I think they will simply become irrelevant and slowly but surely shrink and die," he said in this frank video Q&A.
- Categories
- Technology
-
Tools of the Recycling Trade Include … Tricycles
Lagos has a trash collection problem. A very big one. When Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola heard about it, she thought it represented a business opportunity. So she started a recycling firm, Wecyclers, which shuttles recyclable materials from homes to processing centers on a fleet of tricycles. In this Q&A, she talks about how she got the idea and where she hopes to take it.
- Categories
- Environment, Social Enterprise
-
The Hidden Impact of Microcredit: Three Under-recognized Ways the Industry Can Help Emerging Markets
Microcredit has historically been evaluated – and often found lacking – on the terms that the industry was built on: raising the income, investment and consumption of clients. But, according to Timothy Ogden, there are other ways that microfinance may have had an impact, including helping to build institutions, training people in the technology of management, and strengthening civil society.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Global Health Interventions Need to Hit the Ground Running. Here’s Some Pre-Race Help.
A recent white paper describes a “six-month window” in which global health interventions need to take shape, or else most of them are doomed. To help get things right from the start, and ultimately achieve scale, USAID’s Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact recently published “Ready, Set, Launch: A Country-Level Launch Planning Guide for Global Health Innovations.”
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- innovation, research, scale
-
Announcing NextBillion’s Most Influential Posts of 2016
Congratulations to the three winners of NextBillion’s “Most Influential Post of 2016” contest. Each winner brought a unique mixture of topicality, engaging writing and thought-provoking analysis to their posts, which tackled some of the most important issues facing the social business world in the past year.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
-
A Week at the Cutting Edge: Eight Insights into Emerging Market Fintech
This post by Jake Kendall and Stephen Deng, about innovators prototyping and testing new fintech ideas at the first DFS Lab Fintech Bootcamp in Dar es Salaam, was December's most popular. It's now in the running for Most Influential Post of 2016. Today's the last day to vote for it – or any of the other 11 entrants. The winner will be announced Wednesday.
- Categories
- Technology
-
Microfinance Looks Toward the Future – But Will Fintech Revive the Controversies of Its Past?
James Militzer's wrap-up of European Microfinance Week says microfinance has lurched from development sector darling to punching bag over the years, but in the midst of this turmoil – and in reaction to it – practitioners at industry events have been diligently reimagining their sector. That take earned Militzer a spot in our Most Influential contest. You can participate by casting a vote ... but you've only got one more day.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Can the Mobile Phone Call Youth Back to the Farm?
This post by Christopher Burns and Milani Chatterji-Len, about how mobile phones can offer youth a pathway back to the farm, was October's most popular article. It's the latest entrant in our Most Influential Post of 2016 contest. Please read or re-read the posts and then vote for your favorite(s). Voting ends Jan. 2, and we'll name the winner on Jan. 4.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
