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Unlocking Scale: How seven inclusive businesses are creating their own keys
‘What does it take’ and ‘how long does it take’ for an inclusive business to reach scale? Persistence, adaptation, and many years are the obvious answers, but there is a lot more besides. Some answers to these questions emerge today with the launch of a series of case studies, exploring the journey to scale of seven frontier inclusive businesses supported by the Business Innovation Facility (BIF).
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- Education
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Mobile Money Movers – Part 1: A conversation with Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Head of Strategy for Financial Services at Safaricom
M-Pesa is the world’s leading mobile money system, and one of the biggest success stories in the history of BoP business. Launched in Kenya by Safaricom in 2007, it’s now used by over two-thirds of Kenya’s adult population - and it is expanding to other countries in Africa and beyond. In Part 1 of our Mobile Money Movers series, Kyla Yeoman interviews Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, Head of Strategy for Financial Services at Safaricom.
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- Uncategorized
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Journeying from First-Gen to Second-Gen BoP Strategy: And singing along to a different tune
Taking stock of the past and charting the way forward was a central theme at the BoP Summit. One key challenge, however, is transforming the way we collectively think about the realities of living in subsistence contexts and “frame the base of the pyramid.” Two compelling points made in the summit’s opening session set the stage for what makes this transformation so hard – but also how to journey forward from here.
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- Education
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The LivelyHoods Hustle: Why sales and marketing skills are a natural fit for Nairobi slum youth
The creativity and intelligence of more than 75 percent of the Kenya’s youth goes underutilized in the current job market. Often, they are not only a wasted resource, but contribute to insecurity and unrest when left with few alternatives to survive. We founded LivelyHoods to address this problem by offering sales and marketing training to young people in Nairobi slums.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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Four Lessons From a Social Entrepreneur : Tackling the youth employment crisis in Southern Africa
News headlines are replete with stories of a growing youth bulge and impending youth unemployment crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. Still, many social entrepreneurs are at work even now creating solutions to these types of challenges—a sort of counter-balance that shapes fortune out of misfortune. Young Africa is one of them.
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- Education
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Clean Data for Cleaner Cookstoves: Smartphone app helps improve a life-saving product
Premature deaths from air pollution exceed deaths from malaria and AIDS combined. Indoor cooking contributes to this, but though clean cookstove technology is more than three decades old, slow adoption by consumers means these cookstoves still aren’t in widespread use in the developing world. To fix this problem, some in the industry are changing their focus from technology to people.
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- Health Care, Technology
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NexThought Monday: Pro-poor microfinance – the gift that keeps on giving
As the holidays loom large, we’ve entered the season for giving. But with a multitude of invaluable charities vying for your support, those looking to help the less-fortunate this yuletide have a lot of options to consider. Sara Bowcutt of Microloan Foundation argues that gifts linking microfinance and charity are great ways to help lift families out of poverty.
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- Impact Assessment
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- microfinance
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Weekly Roundup – 11/30/13: Pope’s scathing review of capitalism puts BoP on front pages around the world
Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation this week put the BoP on the front page of every newspaper in the world. As most of us have heard by now, the pope came out on Tuesday with a scathing review of capitalism. Kyle Poplin discusses Francis’ views - and offers a more optimistic take - in this Weekly Roundup.
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