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GM Giants VS Seed Saviors: Food security, contested commercial interests and a host of hot button issues are germinating
Genetically modified seeds have been hailed as the key to ending global hunger, reducing pesticide use and transforming underproductive agriculture. But in the developing world, where those benefits are critically needed, smallholder farmers are also losing their livelihoods to huge industrial farms that outcompete them in the global marketplace. Who wins?
- Categories
- Agriculture
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NexThought Monday – A Better Way to Pay for R&D? (Part 1): The plan to enable everyone to buy drugs at manufacturing cost
Every year, millions of poor people around the world die because they can’t get the medicine they need. Professor Thomas Pogge has long touted an idea that he believes would get the medicine where it’s needed and ensure reasonable returns for pharmaceutical companies. Is it time to pay attention to the Health Impact Fund?
- Categories
- Health Care
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Twitter Top 10: 4-12-15
New resources. New partnerships. Even a cool new toilet. This week’s Twitter Top 10 is full of fascinating ideas and useful info, and you can help us get a head start on next week’s list. If you see anything interesting in the Twitterverse, you’re welcome to tweet it to our editors.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health Care
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Weekly Roundup: Sympathy for the Super-Rich: They don’t care much about socially responsible investing – but are the rest of us any better?
Only 20 percent of investors with a net worth of $5 - $25 million factor social responsibility into their investing decisions, according to a recent survey.
You may be rolling your eyes at the obliviousness of these multi-millionaires to the potential impact of their wealth. That was my initial reaction – until I remembered the email I received last January.- Categories
- Investing, Telecommunications
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The Value of ‘Waste’: Waste Capital Partners Sees Value in Impact Bonds, Franchising
Parag Gupta, CEO of Waste Capital Partners, has a vivid example of how much solid waste is produced each week across urban India: twice the weight of the Empire State Building. Only about half of that garbage is actually collected by municipalities for processing. The for-profit and nonprofit organization hopes to expand with impact bonds and franchises to help both farmers and trash pickers.
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- Agriculture, Education, Social Enterprise
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Avoiding Death by a Thousand Cuts: How a Young Social Enterprise Weathered a Series of Microfailures
David Santillán Giles thought everything was on track with his young social enterprise. But he soon found himself dealing with a string of unforced errors that would put his company in jeopardy. He discusses these mistakes and what he learned from them in the latest post in our series on failure in social enterprise.
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- Social Enterprise
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The Missing Link in Africa’s Tech Eco-System: From idea to biz plans, we need more pre-incubation – and this is how
There are now more 100 tech hubs across Africa. While we have been successful in creating spaces for innovators, the next task ahead of us as an ecosystem is to develop services that help young innovators to better define the problem they want to solve and develop a truly convincing value proposition that can scale.
- Categories
- Technology
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Putting ‘Health’ Back into ‘Health Clinics’: It’s not good, statistically speaking, to be a mother or child in Mali, but new approaches might bring change
A move meant to shift community health expenses from the informal sector to authorized local clinics came up short in Mali. An NGO is looking to help fix things with a health savings program and other approaches designed to bridge the gap between the clinics and the communities they serve.
- Categories
- Health Care
