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Weekly Roundup – 8/21/15 : Private Education, Brought to You By Social Entrepreneurs:
The Economist recently took a long look at the burgeoning private school education industry across emerging markets, and its relative benefits/weaknesses - as well as some government efforts to regulate it out of existence. Given the choice between under-resourced public schools and a generally more reliable and higher quality private education, more parents (even those with very low incomes) are opting for the market approach than ever before.
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- Health Care
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Will West Africa be the New East Africa in Mobile Money?: Shifting regulations and a growing ecosystem make the region an area to watch
Though the member countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union share one currency and one central bank, their mobile money ecosystems differ greatly. However, interoperability will likely be integrated across most of these countries in the not too distant future. Could its new regulatory regimes and developing ecosystems help the region take its place alongside the mobile money sprinters of East Africa?
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- Technology
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Three Pillars for Measuring Impact in Inclusive Financial Services: Apis Partners and Accion Frontier Investments Group publish a framework for impact investors
In seeking to ensure a social as well as financial return on their investments in inclusive financial services, Apis Partners and Accion Frontier Investments Group created a framework to capture these services' unique aspects of impact. This gave rise to three core categories which they believe any fund manager investing in inclusive financial services can use to measure impact.
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- Impact Assessment
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The Next Challenge for Impact Investing – Thinking Small to Think Big: Scaling up support to early-stage social enterprises
Both small investors and businesses are especially in need of partner and mentorship services, but they're left out of most impact investment networks. Global networks that serve as knowledge, best practice and deal flow platforms should focus especially on early-stage social enterprises and investors, which need the most support.
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- Uncategorized
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Fast Lane to the Future: Three ways the ‘leapfrog effect’ is transforming developing countries – and revolutionizing finance
The “leapfrog effect” refers to the phenomenon, in fast-growing emerging economies, of technological advances permitting shortcuts in infrastructure building. This saves considerable time and money – and can deliver quick results that took more developed countries decades to attain. Here are three ways the leapfrog effect is reshaping economies – and finance – in the developing world.
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- Technology
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No Cardiac Clinic? No Problem: Handheld electrocardiogram monitor designed to provide distant, affordable heart care
Makers of Cardiotrack, a handheld ECG monitor, say it's easy to use, provides clinical grade output and performs predictive diagnosis to start intervention immediately, thus reducing the need for invasive intervention. Best of all, they say, is that it saves cardiologists’ time.
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- Health Care, Technology
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Weekly Roundup – 8/15/15: Coke goes fact-free in a week of missteps by multinational organizations
It's not easy being big. Especially when NextBillion's editors are on the lookout for Roundup fodder. This week we sharpened our elbows to take on Coke, the United Nations, Google ... and even the Catholic church. Let us know if you agree with our opinions; we'd love to run some counterpoints in an upcoming Roundup.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- public health
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Needed: A ‘Facebook’ for Impact Investing: Why the Sector Needs to Embrace Failure – And Also Produce Some Inspiring Successes
Impact investing has had some notable success stories, but no true breakout companies that – like Facebook – can inspire public attention and draw more entrepreneurs and investors to the sector. That's a problem, says Vox Capital director Daniel Izzo – as is the fear of failure, both financial and social, among investors. He discusses these challenges, and some possible solutions, in this video Q&A.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise