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The Hidden Solution to Off-Grid Solar’s $21 Billion Funding Gap: How Open Source Can Multiply the Impact of Every Dollar Invested
The energy access sector has a math problem. According to Vivien Barnier at the EnAccess Foundation, closing the last-mile electricity gap will require $21 billion in investment for off-grid solar alone, yet in 2024, total investment in off-grid solar companies fell by 30%, landing at just under $300 million. Given the size of this gap, he argues that calls for additional funding alone are not enough, and that a new approach is needed, one that can multiply the impact of every dollar already committed: open source. He explores why open source infrastructure in energy access — including shared software, open hardware designs, interoperability standards and open data platforms — is fundamental to the sector's growth.
- Categories
- Energy, Finance, Technology
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PAYGo’s Credit Problem is Putting Off-Grid Solar at Risk: Why the Sector Needs to Separate Sales from Lending
Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) solar has brought light and power to millions of rural households, demonstrating that they will use the installment payment model to purchase assets that improve their lives. But as Willem Nolens at in24 argues, the sector is now confronting a credit problem that puts both PAYGo businesses and their customers at risk, as low repayment rates are leading to power and asset loss among households across sub-Saharan Africa. He explores the causes of this challenge, and argues that the solution lies in splitting the sales and lending elements of PAYGO solar into separate providers.
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It’s Not You, It’s the Work: Why Social Entrepreneurs Often Face Burnout, and What the Ecosystem Can Do About It
As their own bosses, social entrepreneurs have the freedom to decide when to switch off and take some time away from work. But as Andreana Drencheva at King’s College London and Wee Chan Au at Newcastle University argue, they often feel unable to use that freedom — a situation that frequently leads to burnout. And advice on how to avoid burnout typically fails to take their unique pressures and responsibilities into account. They share findings from their recent study of 40 social entrepreneurs in Malaysia, describing the four conditions that drive this inability to switch off, and exploring how funders, clients and other ecosystem players can provide more support.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- research
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Harder Choices Ahead: What the Financial Inclusion Compass 2026 Tells us About the Sector’s Shifting Challenges
What is the biggest story in financial inclusion in 2026? Sam Mendelson at European Microfinance Platform (e-MFP) shares insights from e-MFP's “Financial Inclusion Compass 2026,” a survey of sector trends, risks and priorities that's been published since 2018. As he explains, the survey responses show a sector that is raising its ambitions for what financial inclusion has to achieve, at the same time as the environment in which it operates is becoming more difficult. He explores some key findings, as financial inclusion moves away from an era characterized by access, growth and donor-supported expansion, and towards one increasingly shaped by resilience, adaptation, commercial pressure, and harder choices about who gets served, how and at what cost.
- Categories
- Finance
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Capital Without Context is Not Impact Investing: Why Trust Networks are Essential Infrastructure, and How the Sector Can Leverage Them More Effectively
According to many funders, a common reason why impact capital does not reach enterprises in emerging markets is the lack of investable deal flow. But as Alessa Berg at Top Tier Impact argues, a pipeline of investable businesses exists. What's lacking is the connective tissue between investors and entrepreneurs: networks of trusted, embedded practitioners who can surface credible opportunities, do meaningful due diligence, and bridge the enormous information asymmetry between funders and founders. She explores the importance of these trust networks in impact investing, and argues that the sector needs to mobilize funding to help build them.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing, lending
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Impact Entrepreneurship During the Polycrisis: An Interview with Laurie Lane-Zucker
The impact sector has proven that business can do good. But how can it make those impacts last, as the polycrisis puts communities, ecosystems and business models at increasing risk around the world? Those are some of the questions at the heart of a new book, “The Impact Entrepreneur Breakthrough: A Field Manual for the Regenerative Economy,” by Laurie Lane-Zucker, the founder and CEO of Impact Entrepreneur. In this interview, he shares guidance from the book — and from his decades of work as a pioneering voice in the impact space — on how the sector can navigate the growing complexity of the global challenges it faces today.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Digital Public Infrastructure Is Supposed To Be Interoperable: Why Does the Standardization End When Something Goes Wrong?
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is becoming more common in emerging markets, as a growing number of governments are building population-scale digital systems for identity, payments and data exchange. And as DPI increasingly crosses national borders, involving multiple governments, processes and contractors, the need for interoperability in these systems is growing. According to David Porteous at Integral: Governance Solutions, Maria Luciano, Deepti George at Yutadhi, and Sahana Arun Kumar at Amarante Consulting, this growing reach and complexity mean that redress — i.e., citizens’ ability to challenge errors in DPI systems and obtain remedy — should also be interoperable. They share insights from a research project that examined grievance redress mechanisms for 15 DPI systems in Brazil, India, South Africa, Benin and Ethiopia, exploring how they can move toward greater standardization.
- Categories
- Technology
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Is the World Bank to Blame for the Cambodian Microfinance Crisis?
For the past five years, Cambodia’s microfinance sector has been experiencing a major over-indebtedness crisis. And as inclusive finance consultant Daniel Rozas explains, despite multiple warnings that the sector was overheating, IFC, the World Bank’s private investment arm, poured fuel on the flames by investing in the largest and fastest-growing of the country's leading microfinance institutions. Making matters worse, after an investigation by IFC’s own ombudsman concluded that clients had been harmed due to its failure to monitor the social risks created by its investments, its board dismissed those findings. He explores how the industry went off the rails in Cambodia, and argues that IFC not only worsened the crisis, it helped undermine the sector’s own efforts to avert it.
