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Following the (Mobile) Money: Services now available in 61 percent of developing markets, GSMA reports
The mobile financial services sector continued to expand in 2014, boosted by the creation of more enabling regulatory frameworks in several markets, according to the GSMA’s 2014 State of the Industry Report on mobile financial services. With 255 mobile money services in operation across 89 countries, mobile money services are now available in over 60 percent of developing markets.
- Categories
- Technology
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Scaling Up What Works: Study focuses on using the private sector as a way to increase the effectiveness of primary care services
Most global child mortality could be prevented through effective primary care interventions. To help meet these basic needs, the Rapid Routes to Scale group is detailing ways to scale up primary care in low- and middle-income countries.
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- Health Care
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Creating an Efficient Funnel for Inclusive Business: How agri-processors, farmers, food banks and the government are blending an alliance
Minka-Dev helped a growing food ingredients company in Colombia connect with smallholder farmers. The authors, both from Minka-Dev, detail the process, which involves not only farmers, but also food banks, government and business players.
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- Agriculture
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Striving for Consistency: A new guide aims to standardize impact assessments of the growing microinsurance market
Estimates suggest there are close to 270 million microinsurance clients in the developing world, with a potential market estimated at 3 to 4 billion policies. But while assessing the social impact of this growing sector is vital to improving product design, there is a dearth of consistency amongst the impact assessments being conducted. Microinsurance Network created “A Practical Guide to Impact Assessments” to address this challenge.
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- Education, Health Care, Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday – Test Tubers: Why potatoes in Bangladesh are turning heads in the Andes
If you’re a subsistence farmer of potatoes, cassava or bananas, you’ll often sow your crops by taking cuttings from other plants. An alternative method of in vitro micro-propagation involves cloning plantlets in a laboratory setting. This can lead to dramatic gains in crop yields, but it’s expensive. But there may be a low-tech solution.
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- Agriculture, Education, Technology
- Tags
- research
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Twitter Top Ten – 3/1/15
Our weekly Twitter Top 10 is only a click away, and full of information. Among the highlights: Bill Gates put on his green eyeshade (you might have to look that one up, millennials) and assumed the role of editor.
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- Health Care
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Weekly Roundup – Walking Across the Bridge as You Build It
For companies that seek not only global expansion but sincerely hope to create inclusive businesses that serve lower-income people, much of the low-hanging (profitable) fruit has been taken. The next step for those businesses and their managers might be into some unfamiliar territory, especially given those managers’ educational experiences.
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- Education
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- academia
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NextBillion’s (First) Market Dynamics E-book: A compilation of posts from the first year of our initiative
The market – the same supply and demand interplay that has helped create order and prosperity in the developed world – is failing to serve health care in the developing world. That’s why “market dynamics” has become a term du jour in global health, and why NextBillion Health Care in spring 2014 launched an initiative aimed to exploring the concept. Now we’ve added an e-book.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- vaccines
