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Three BoP Business Portfolios: Progress across three portfolios supporting 160 companies
Caroline Ashley evaluates three base of the pyramid investment portfolios: The Business Innovation Facility pilot (2010-2013), Innovations Against Poverty pilot (2011-2013) and Business Call to Action (five years old and ongoing). The data is based on years of rich engagement with three contrasting portfolios, each with an exciting - but different - array of innovative businesses.
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- Uncategorized
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Three Key Steps for Boosting Mobile Money in Nigeria: Grameen Foundation explores ways the struggling sector could reach its potential
As the largest of Africa’s fast-growing economies, Nigeria is a promising market for mobile finance. Yet though almost 57 percent of Nigerian adults have no access to formal financial services, only 0.1 percent actively use mobile money. Grameen Foundation explores the reasons for the stunted growth of mobile services, and outlines some key steps that could increase their adoption and continued use.
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- Uncategorized
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Cash Versus Cows (Part 2): What’s more scalable – cash transfers or in-kind transfers?
Successfully catapulting ultra-poor households over the extreme poverty line is incredibly hard work, and requires philanthropic capital and grant-based approaches. In this second part of a two-part series, BRAC’s Rod Dubitsky and Sadna Samaranayake pose a seemingly simple question: Is it better to give a cow or cash to seed sustainable livelihoods for the poorest-of-the-poor?
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- Agriculture
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Financial Education in the Digital Age: It’s affordable, it’s scalable – but does it work?
Financial education is a key strategy for achieving full financial inclusion. But in-person group training by a human trainer have failed to consistently improve beneficiaries’ knowledge and behavior, and they are often too costly to scale. Nowadays, however, individualized financial education can reach millions at a low cost via digital platforms. IPA is examining the impact and potential of these programs.
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- Education
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NexThought Monday – 12/15/14 – The Over-The-Counter Paradox: Dependence on agent transactions is holding digital finance back – but could agents also move the sector forward?
Over-the-counter (OTC) transactions are mobile money transactions facilitated by a provider’s agent network - and they’re an integral part of most successful services. But while MicroSave founder Graham Wright argues that dependence on OTC transactions is hobbling the development of the digital finance ecosystem, he says these agents could also present a solution.
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- Uncategorized
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Twitter Top Ten – 12/14/14: Our favorite tweets of the week
As we move one step closer to the end of the year, we’ve got a full slate of interesting tweets from the past week. They include some encouraging investments and new partnerships, important new research, and an intriguing reply from Safaricom to a recent NextBillion post. As always, if you see anything you like, be sure to retweet it.
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- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – 12-14-13: Is wishful thinking sustaining or stopping global development?
In this week’s roundup, a $64 million (plus) year for off-grid solar investments in developing markets, the inspirational story behind Doorways to Dreams, and The New Republic essay that wants to put an end to wishful (scalable) thinking in development.
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- Energy
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- impact investing, savings, solar
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October’s Most Viewed, Most Shared Posts on NB
The most popular and most shared articles for October focus on hybrid profit/nonprofit approaches to social enterprise, the need for smarter microfinance approaches and the re-issue of a database tracking more than $15 billion in impact fund assets.
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- Social Enterprise
