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Outgrower Systems Hold Promise for Smallholder African Farmers
African agriculture is poised for a boom. Investors are buying large tracts of land as commodity prices rise and Africa’s business climate improves. But will this mean higher rural incomes and a better quality of life for smallholder farmers? A new joint report from IFAD and TechnoServe highlights the promise and challenges outgrower schemes.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Microfinance at a Crossroads: Balancing Good Intentions with Critical Industry Structuring
As the microfinance industry matures, the cracks in the model have become more apparent. When an idea built from good intentions scales, hidden costs begin to grow and the call for more structure becomes louder. These cracks are not just on one side of the equation, and need to be addressed through collective effort by borrowers and lenders.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Friday Roundup – 9/23/11: Microcredit Rethought
This week Muhammad Yunus told NextBillion writer Sadna Samaranayake if he could do it all over again, he would not have let the "profit-makers" join the microcredit movement. But would there have been a movement without hard-nosed margin seekers in the first place? For the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a closer look at microcredit.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- microfinance
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Africa Election Watch 2011: Zambia
Was this the referendum on Chinese business in Africa? In a somewhat surprising turn, perennial opposition leader Michael Sata secured victory this week against incumbent president Rupiah Banda in Zambia’s national election. Sata is known as "King Cobra" for his often vituperative statements that have targeted Chinese business practices in Zambia.
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- Uncategorized
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The Doughnut Hole in Sustainable Finance
Despite the recent upsurge in attention to "social," "impact," and "clean tech" investing, there is still a structural gap ? a doughnut hole ? in sustainable finance. But this also means that there is a huge opportunity for visionary financiers to invent the new investment categories and asset classes needed to fill this gap.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
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All that Glitters is Good?
In the old and dusty-yet-safe world of development aid, things were easy: Profit was at best a necessary evil of the private sector, at worst a sign that the poor were exploited as cheap labour or consumers. In the new world of impact investing and "BoP strategies", things become more entangled.
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- Impact Assessment
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How would Muhammad Yunus Redesign Microcredit? How Can We Better Design Models for Social Change?
Given the past year of controversies in microcredit and an opportunity to meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus at Change Model, a workshop focused on innovating development approaches, we asked Dr. Yunus how the sector could have been designed differently. His resolute response: "I would not let the profit-makers be part of the movement."
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- scale
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Why Peace Pays: Building a More Secure World Through Economic Development
Peace and prosperity are nearly inseparable. Violence and war rob people of the chance to better their lives through hard work. And when a society struggles with poverty and unemployment, it sets the stage for unrest. Today, on the International Day of Peace, TechnoServe is spreading a simple message: Peace pays.
- Categories
- Agriculture
