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Mondato Summit Africa: The high-level mobile money gathering will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa on June 17-18th
Mobile money is reshaping financial services in the developing world, and Africa has become the epicenter of the movement. That’s why NextBillion is pleased to announce that we’ll be a media partner with Mondato Summit Africa, an mCommerce, mobile money and innovations conference taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa on June 17-18th.
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- digital payments
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When For-profit Is the Right Answer for a Social Enterprise: Nuru International’s Transformation Toward Profitability, Without Losing Its Social Values
Late last year nonprofit Nuru International made a major transition from a donor-focused operating model toward a profit driven one. Nisha Chakravarty, who joined as the first President and Founder of Nuru Social Enterprises, describes the process and the quest for a “perfect” model of sustainability.
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More Questions than Answers: Impact investors struggle to present their sector to the general public
What qualifies as “impact” investing – and how exactly should non-financial impacts be measured? Those may seem like pretty basic questions. Yet at the recent Sustainatopia Impact Conference, clear answers were in short supply, as a young sector works toward a consensus on the best way to present itself to mainstream investors.
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- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Shifting Tracks From Cash to Mobile Money: The development sector is transitioning, but many internal and external obstacles remain
While some development organizations have successfully integrated mobile money into their processes, others face operational and technical challenges in making this transition. As mobile money becomes more ubiquitous globally, how can development stakeholders best tap into these networks to achieve their goal of poverty alleviation?
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The Rx for Doctor, Entrepreneur Communication: Improving global health care includes speaking the same language
Both physicians and entrepreneurs, hopefully, are interested in improving the lives of the medically underserved around the world. To make this happen, the entrepreneurs need the doctors and the doctors need the entrepreneurs.
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- Education, Health Care
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- scale, skill development
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Social Impact Bonds in Latin America: Reframing Social Development in the Region
The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, in March launched a $5.3 million fund to test a new social sector financing tool: Social Impact Bonds. This fund is a window to a promising new approach to social development in Latin America. SIBs hope to improve the effectiveness of social programs through an alignment of incentives and a powerful multi-sector partnership.
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- Finance
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How a Profit Focus is Expanding Water Access: Xylem sought to ‘upend’ the tradition business model, aiming for the BoP
When water technology company Xylem started manufacturing simple pumps for smallholder farmers, it wasn’t for charity, the company expected to profit. Its new Essence of Life line caters to the everyday water needs of farmers with small plots of land, among some of the world’s poorest customers. Like any of its customers, Xylem expects these farmers to pay for the right product at the right price.
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- Agriculture
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The Great Equalizer: How advances in “big data” allow tech-savvy start-ups to compete with the major players in East Africa
Thanks to the availability of fast, inexpensive data, start-ups with technology-enabled models can create scaled products and innovate much faster, smarter, and more cheaply than incumbent institutions. Accion Venture Lab’s Nate Gonzalez discusses why this is particularly relevant to the SME lending space in East Africa.
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