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NexThought Monday – Impact White Washing?: When any deal in a developing country with a few generic metrics can be considered impactful
Max Pichulik, who runs an investment accelerator in South Africa, argues that it is way too easy for fund managers to declare themselves as impact investors. Unless we ensure meaningful rating systems, provide adequate education to the marketplace and have clear safeguards in place, Pichulik says that impact investors run the risk of placing capital with marginal impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing
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Twitter Top Ten – 11-2-14: Our favorite tweets of the week
Our "favorite tweets of the week" feature continues. Check it out. And help us out by keeping a close eye on your feed this coming week and tweeting your favorites our way.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Weekly Roundup – 11/1/14: Apple Pay is here – should low-income consumers care?
As you may have heard, Apple recently launched a mobile payment app in the U.S. Within three days, it had become the top mobile wallet in the country - and sparked some surprising resistance. We discuss the implications for low-income consumers in the U.S. and emerging markets, along with some good news in global development, in this Roundup.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology
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Prepaid Protections: An interview with Cecilia Frew, Head of U.S. Prepaid at Visa
Prepaid debit cards are booming in the U.S., with consumers loading over $64 billion onto them in 2012. But due to regulatory uncertainty, there’s widespread confusion about their fees and terms. To address this, Visa is creating a special designation for cards that meet a set of consumer-friendly standards. We spoke with Cecilia Frew, Visa’s Head of U.S. Prepaid, about the product.
- Categories
- Finance
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Four ways to build an ecosystem to support business in low-income markets: How the Philippines is crafting a model worth replicating
The Philippines has proven itself an excellent example of a nation’s capacity to support ecosystem development, a model that could well be replicated in many countries. As UNDP looks to replicate the success of its country-level collaboration through the Business Call to Action Initiative in the Philippines, it is establishing a collaboration with the William Davidson Institute as part of the BoP Roadmap Initiative.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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For Education Investment, ‘The Fix is in the Mix’: At SOCAP14, talks turned to long-term models
What would it take to attract more private capital toward funding for education? It was a key question at SOCAP14, and one that will require a lot more experimentation, writes Wedu’s Mario Ferror.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- impact investing
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Separating Potential from Panacea: USAID’s primer offers a disciplined approach to market shaping
While market shaping can be transformative, it’s not a cure-all. USAID’s primer offers a disciplined approach to examining a health product market and evaluating whether and how market shaping could increase access for end users.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- governance, supply chains
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Gates Foundation Alters Course in Pursuit of Breakthroughs: New Grand Challenges reflect that innovation and scale go hand in hand
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted its Grand Challenges Annual Meeting last week and announced three new challenges ... with a twist. Going forward, applicants will be required to partner with manufacturers, biomedical companies or others with expertise in product development before Gates will fund a project.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- impact investing, scale
