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Weekly Roundup: Nano Lending Under the Microsope and A Bond to Fight Diabetes
This week Tigo announced it will launch collateral-free nano loans to customers through its Tigo Pesa mobile financial platform in Tanzania. The unsecured loans will average $10,000 Tanzanian shillings (US $5). Is this the lift "nano lending" needs? Plus, Israel begins a new social impact bond to fight diabetes, what it could mean for financing global health.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- mobile finance
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Mobile Data Has the Answers, But First, We Need to Ask the Right Questions
I’ve realized that when guiding social enterprises, nonprofits and international NGOs to begin using data, it’s helpful to focus on a key, sometimes obvious point: data has to actually answer a critical business or programmatic question. Mobile data collection for the sake of collecting data isn’t enough.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- research
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Graduating Out of Extreme Poverty in Haiti … Permanently
Six years ago, microlending firm Fonkoze launched Chemin Lavi Mio, or the "pathway to a better life," pilot program. CLM is designed to move women and their families out of extreme poverty – permanently. It provides support over the course of 18 months through a carefully tailored package of asset transfers, improved housing and sanitation, water filters and, importantly, weekly visits that provide mentoring and guidance. Anton Simanowitz returns to Haiti to check on the poverty "graduation" effort as it looks to scale.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday – What Uber and Airbnb Can Teach Us About Global Development
The sharing economy isn't built on apps or smartphones. Its foundation is something far less high tech: paper. Specifically, legal papers related to property such as deeds, titles, leases and the institutions that uphold them. But those documents, and the rights that go with them, are far too scarce for the poor. How some countries are transforming their property rights and land tenure systems, and why the development community should take notice.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup: Obama Chases Bush’s Africa Legacy, Kenya’s Diaspora Leadership and Gray Ghost’s $60M Fund
It’s incongruous to many that the son of a Kenyan is widely perceived to have done less to help Africa than a predecessor best known for putting the U.S. in a bad war and a bad light in so many other places around the globe. Could the President’s Malaria Initiative help change those perceptions?
- Categories
- Health Care
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From Planning to Execution: Using Value Chain Approach to Lending to Smallholder Farmers and Agribusiness
Lack of financial data about agribusinesses and smallholder farmers makes it even more difficult to adopt conventional methods of credit assessment. Most plain vanilla financial products are ill-suited to the cash flow requirements of an agribusiness, which is often cyclical in nature. But where most financial institutions see a challenge, we at Samunnati saw an opportunity in lending to smallholder farmers and agribusinesses.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Evaluation that Creates Value for Participants: A Client-Centric Approach
Too often, the process of collecting data to evaluate impact, regardless of the intent, feels extractive to the research participants. Extractive industries are those that obtain natural resources from the earth without provision for the potential negative consequences of extraction. Similarly, some evaluations extract data from disadvantaged communities without providing any benefit in return. How Root Capital has taken a more client-centric approach.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- research
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Powering Up International Women’s Day – The Skilled Girl Effect
Women are relatively new entrants to the formal workforce in Bangladesh, and most are the first in their families to have a job. As the trend of greater female employment spreads across the country, women are increasingly taking up leadership positions as well, which has tremendous implications for the country’s workforce. BRAC discusses these changes, and its efforts to support them through skills training.
- Categories
- Education
