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The Magic of Mobile Money: Looking back on the days when I used to sellotape coins on order slips
Mobile access innovator Nigel Waller looks back on the progress that’s been made in bringing mobile financial products to the BoP - and considers the overwhelming need for financial services that’s driving this progress.
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- Uncategorized
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(With Video) One Acre Fund’s Drive Toward Sustainable Farming and Sustainable Finance: An interview with Stephanie Hanson
Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States, so we’re taking time to think about the farmers that bring forth our bounty, not just in the U.S., but around the world. NextBillion managing editor Scott Anderson spoke with Stephanie Hanson, Director of Policy and Outreach at One Acre Fund, a nonprofit based in East Africa that provides loans, training and other agricultural services to farmers in four countries.
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- Agriculture
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Sterilization Without Electricity: Technology being adapted to make surgery safer in low-resource environments
Worldwide, 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity, and sterilizing medical instruments is currently impossible in the absence of an energy source. That’s why Eniware is building a power-free, low-cost, portable medical instrument sterilization unit.
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- Health Care
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Using Feedback Loops to Move from Collaboration to Collective Impact : Part 2 in a series on the power of community feedback
This is the second post in a series on the power and potential of feedback loops to increase the social benefits of development assistance. In it, Jeff Edmondson of StriveTogether discusses the importance of being more disciplined about feedback loops and creating incentives that focus the right people on the right work at the right time.
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- Education
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Don’t Forget Hygiene: Health care delivery in sub-Saharan Africa is complicated, but simple things still matter
Dr. Patrick Lukulay, vice president of the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention’s Global Health Impact Programs and program director for the USAID-funded Promoting the Quality of Medicines program, was born and raised in Sierra Leone and has a unique perspective on how to get pharmaceuticals into the hands of the people who need them in sub-Saharan Africa.
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- Health Care
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- public health
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Faith and Finance: The director of an Islamic microfinance institution discusses the challenges of mixing business and religion
In Kyrgyzstan, over 85 percent of citizens are followers of Islam, and many seek to run Halal businesses. So offering Shari’a compliant financial services just makes sense. But Kompanion Invest, the country’s only Islamic microfinance institution, is facing challenges as it tries to achieve full Shari’a compliance. The company’s director discusses those challenges, and the broader Islamic microfinance sector, in this frank Q&A.
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NexThought Monday: What’s your feedback loop? (Part 1)
With social change organizations desperate to find fitting solutions for the people they are trying to help, it’s curious that they haven’t been able to tap into this methodology. Why can’t social change organizations implement feedback programs that are equally effective? Is it possible to create similar mechanisms that require social change organizations to listen to what communities want—and then act on what they hear?
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- Education
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Weekly Roundup – 11/22/13: Nudging the middle men and women of social enterprise
A new working paper doesn’t simply look at what small and growing businesses (those categorized seeking growth capital of between $20,000-$2 million) need to be doing, but what the “intermediaries” need to be doing to lift budding businesses.
