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Insights from 10 Years of Boosting Gender Inclusion in Business: A Pioneering Social Enterprise Explores How the Sector Can Take the Next Steps
Over the past 10 years, gender inclusion has become a growing priority in business and investing. However, as Rebecca Fries and Luis Marquez at Value for Women point out, only $6 billion was raised for gender lens investing in 2021 — a tiny percentage of the $1.2 trillion raised by private markets globally. As Value for Women moves into its second decade, they share insights that will fuel progress toward gender inclusion in business and investment in emerging markets over the coming years.
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- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Rethinking Scale in Agribusiness: An Impact Investor Explores the Massive Benefits of Being Small
Many impact investors have adopted the mindset of traditional venture capital, seeking out companies with the potential to reach millions of customers. But Chris Wayne and Coco Lim at Acumen argue that this single-minded focus on scale ignores the realities of agribusinesses in emerging markets, and overlooks small businesses' potential to make a deeper impact. They explore why impact investors should focus on more than just the number of "lives impacted” by their agriculture investments, moving toward a more nuanced understanding of scale in this crucial sector.
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- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Yunus Was Right — Credit is Indeed a Human Right, and Savings is Important Too: Why the Microfinance Sector Must Avoid the ‘Circular Firing Squad’ and Promote Multiple Approaches to Financial Inclusion
Alex Counts, financial inclusion pioneer and founder of Grameen Foundation, took issue with Jeffrey Ashe’s recent NextBillion article, “Yunus Was Wrong—Savings, Not Credit, is a Human Right.” He argues that, instead of seeing the world through an “either/or” lens, the financial inclusion sector should embrace multiple tools, including credit, savings, insurance and more — and he urges today's changemakers to avoid promoting one social innovation at the expense of others.
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- Finance, Social Enterprise
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Closing the ‘Subjective Impact Gap’: How Social Enterprises Can Motivate and Retain Talent by Overcoming Doubts About Their Impact
Social enterprises often struggle to recruit a skilled workforce, leading many to attract workers by promising a rewarding job that makes a difference. But as Andreana Drencheva at King’s College London explains, workers don't always experience this sense of positive impact — something she terms the "subjective impact gap." She explores how this issue can affect staff morale, recruitment and retention, and shares five ways social enterprises can address it.
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- Social Enterprise
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Sweeter Prospects for Cocoa Farmers: A Recent Study Shows How Formal Land Rights Improve the Financial Outlook for Smallholders in Cote d’Ivoire
Cocoa is one of the world’s most prized foods, but the smallholder farmers who produce it typically live in poverty and often lack formal rights to the land they're farming. Scott Graham and Anahit Tevosyan at FINCA International explore how a partnership between global chocolate companies and other industry and development sector players is strengthening farmers' property rights in Cote d’Ivoire — the source of 45% of the world’s cocoa — thereby aiming to improve their financial health and resilience.
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- Agriculture, Finance
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Navigating the Customer Engagement Cycle in the World’s ‘Mobile-Only’ Continent: How to Reach African Customers in a Shifting Online Landscape
Customer engagement has evolved over the years, as businesses' focus has shifted from continually acquiring new customers, to building long-term relationships with existing ones. But as Ayodeji Balogun at Terragon explains, businesses in Africa often struggle to foster this long-term engagement due to the complex nuances of the market — including the unique ways customers use digital tools. He explores how businesses can leverage mobile technology to optimize customer engagement in Africa, while navigating the market’s specific needs and challenges.
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- Technology
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The Jobtech Landscape in Africa: Assessing the Challenges and Opportunities in a Critical Sector
What really is the future of work in Africa? Michelle Hassan at BFA Global, and Chris Maclay and Bethany Hou at the Jobtech Alliance argue that it will be driven by the growing use of technology to enable, facilitate or improve people’s work opportunities, productivity and livelihoods — an emerging sector that’s collectively known as “jobtech.” They share new insights into the key players, business models, trends and opportunities across Africa's jobtech industry.
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- Technology
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Yunus Was Wrong — Savings, Not Credit, is a Human Right: Here’s How the Financial Inclusion Sector Can Shift its Focus
After playing a key role in the early development of the microfinance sector, Jeffrey Ashe went to Bosnia in the mid-1990s to consult on a new microfinance project. In those days, microcredit was widely viewed as a silver bullet that could end poverty, but while working in Bosnia, he learned that informal savings groups were already providing an effective alternative to formal loans in the local community. Ashe has spent the subsequent decades studying and supporting savings groups in countries around the world. He shares research that illuminates these groups' vast global impact, and argues that they could achieve far more if the financial inclusion sector supported them.
- Categories
- Finance