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The Three Ingredients of Impact AI: Research from India Offers Guidance for AI for Social Good in Emerging Markets
The conversation around “AI for social good” has moved beyond hype and potential and into a high-stakes implementation phase, as a growing number of real-world use cases have emerged. Kalpa Impact conducted analysis of 97 startups and 13 non-profits deploying AI for social good at population-scale in India, seeking to understand who is building these tools, where they are being deployed and whether there is evidence of impact. Sushant Kumar and Ananya Mukherjee at Kalpa Impact share insights from this analysis, highlighting three key ingredients that can enable the successful deployment of impact AI in India and other emerging markets.
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- Technology
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The Blind Spot in the EU’s New Deforestation Regulations: Laws and Satellites Don’t Save Forests — People Do
The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) represents an ambitious legislative effort to protect our planet’s remaining forests. But Priscillia Moulin at MosaiX highlights a potential flaw in the regulations: To meet the EUDR's data requirements and prove that their supply chains are deforestation-free, major commodity buyers are turning to remote sensing and satellite AI — and if these technologies detect any tree-cover loss, the path of least resistance is often to permanently exclude that supplier. She argues that this creates the illusion of compliance while pushing vulnerable small farmers into the grey market, as satellite algorithms can identify changes in forest cover but cannot determine intent or causality, or assess other complex realities on the ground. She proposes three ways companies can comply with the EUDR without freezing smallholders out of the EU's premium, regulated markets.
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- Agriculture, Environment
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What Drives Positive Outcomes in Gender-Lens Investing? DFI Portfolio Evaluations Reveal Four Key Factors
Few developments in the impact investing space have been as striking as the rise of gender-lens investing, as recent years have seen development finance institutions (DFIs) and others mobilize a growing amount of capital for gender equality. Katie Turner, and Jenny Holden at Kore Global share a first-of-its-kind synthesis of portfolio evaluations involving several DFIs, providing evidence on the outcomes and impact of their gender-lens investments at scale. They explore what these findings suggest about how and why some investments achieve deeper and more meaningful gender outcomes than others.
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- Investing
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Mastering the Art of Stewardship: Why Building Operational Sovereignty — Not Simply Navigating Funding Cuts — Will Define Africa’s Healthcare Future
In response to drastic cuts in global health financing, African governments are increasingly seeking greater health sovereignty — i.e., the ability to manage their health systems without structural dependence on external actors. But according to Scott Dubin at Logistics Marketplace, limited fiscal space is complicating their efforts to replace the often-fragmented and overlapping support structures that have long been provided by multilateral health funds, international NGOs and other outside entities. He explores how Africa's movement toward health sovereignty is revealing deeper capacity gaps in the continent's health systems, and proposes seven practical ways governments can effectively steward the markets and systems that support public health delivery.
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- Health Care
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Designing Credit Systems for Informal Economies: Why More Data Alone Is Not Enough
The global financing gap for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) is estimated in the trillions. As Ayokunmi Sodamola argues, the reason for this gap is not that these enterprises exhibit poor financial behaviors — or even that there’s a lack of data that can be used to establish their creditworthiness. It's that standard credit assessment systems aren't designed to capture and interpret the data generated by their informal financial activities. He explores how lenders can build a more integrated approach that treats data, identity, trust, risk and incentives as interconnected layers of a single credit system.
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- Finance
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After the Grant Ends: Why Rural Water Utilities Fail — And What We Learned from Building One
For decades, rural water projects in low- and middle-income countries have followed a familiar pattern: Infrastructure is built, communities are trained, a ribbon is cut — and within a few years, the system stops working. After leading the early operations of Max TapWater, a social enterprise providing piped water in rural Bangladesh, Saif Islam identified a fundamental reason for these failures: Investment continues to prioritize capital infrastructure over the operational and maintenance budget needed to sustain it. He explores this challenge, and shares other lessons he has learned about how rural water facilities can sustain operations beyond the grant period.
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Courageous Capital: How Africa Built its Own Tech Ecosystem
Africa’s tech sector has been thriving for almost three decades, during which its entrepreneurs have quietly built a self-sustaining ecosystem. And as Marsha Wulff at LoftyInc Capital explains, instead of government and charitable institutions taking the lead, it has been Africa’s own innovators who have developed its tech infrastructure and driven its commercial success. She explores how African entrepreneurs and investors have built a vibrant and resilient tech ecosystem that addresses the continent's unique needs — and taps its massive growth potential.
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- Investing, Technology
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Understanding Africa’s Broken Climate Finance System: How the Missing Layers in the Capital Stack are Holding the Market Back
Africa needs roughly $277 billion a year in climate finance to meet its 2030 climate goals. Yet as Gagandeep Bakshi at the William Davidson Institute and Santosh Singh at Intellecap explain, with annual flows of $44-50 billion, the gap is considerable — and investors are pulling back just as the need for this funding is growing. Making matters worse, they argue that the problem is not just in the numbers, since beneath these totals, there is a thin layer of capital piling into a handful of companies and countries, while missing layers in the capital stack prevent the emergence of a more balanced market. They explore how this issue is holding investors and entrepreneurs back, and propose a more effective approach.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing
