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Implementing Market Systems Programs in Fragile Contexts
Many farmers operating in a market system broken by conflict have been propped up by global humanitarian efforts. However, Andy Hunter, a market systems practitioner, says that replacing essential commercial services with donor-funded direct delivery options is a market distortion that ultimately ensures a complete collapse of a functional market system.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Weekly Roundup: A Different Kind of Pivot in SE Asia, a Surprising Collaboration in India and South Africa’s Sweet Move
Among the discussion items in this week's Roundup: the bumper crop of social enterprises in Southeast Asia; India's uphill climb toward financial inclusion; some mixed news about microfinance; South Africa takes action against obesity; and Sisu's carefully planned success.
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- Uncategorized
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The Volatile ‘Face’ of Digital Financial Services in Zambia
Mobile money operators in Zambia – a country where only half of the residents are even aware of the concept of mobile money – don’t seem to stick around for very long; in fact, 90 percent of them have been in the business for less than one year. What can stop the churn? Research shows that higher income would help, and that can result from better training.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Stopping the Spread of ‘Superbugs’: Six Promising Solutions
The use, overuse and misuse of antimicrobial drugs has created resistant strains of bacteria that could be a greater threat in poorer nations than in richer ones, due to the absence of monitoring and surveillance systems for drug resistance and lack of regulation. And if new antibiotics become available, they are likely to be expensive and unaffordable in the developing world. Here are six ways the global health community can respond.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Three Keys to Scaling Technology in Africa
Based on the success of Mama Rescue, a cloud-based transport voucher and emergency dispatch system for mothers in rural Uganda, UNICEF and the Ugandan Ministry of Health decided that the platform should be scaled up to the entire country. Here are three key lessons they've learned for successfully scaling technology.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Closing the $2.5 Trillion Gap: How blended finance can help achieve the SDGs
The UN estimates it will take $3.9 trillion a year to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Based on current global development spending, that implies an annual funding shortfall of $2.5 trillion. Convergence describes how blended finance can bring together private and public investors to fill that gap.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing, SDGs
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid: Exploring the “digital poverty stack” – Part 2
In the first post in this series, we proposed that donors and governments advance digital and financial inclusion by focusing more on creating public goods that enable the broader ecosystem, rather than on peripheral innovation in service delivery. In this second post, we discuss the implications of this shift and highlight some new efforts to move the fields in the right direction.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid – Exploring the ‘Digital Poverty Stack,’ Part 1
Donor investments to leverage technology have largely failed to achieve their imagined potential, often producing sub-scale pilot projects which do not solve a real problem. Instead, donors should focus on building a “digital poverty stack,” a set of interoperable and reusable digital tools that can be built into a large number of applications.
- Categories
- Technology
