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What’s Really Driving Africa’s ‘Investment Frenzy’?: An Entrepreneur Responds to Investor Concerns
In her much-discussed NextBillion article about avoiding “the Africa investment frenzy,” impact investor Lauren Cochran urged entrepreneurs to forego the “growth-at-all-costs” approach to scaling and “the ego-boost of big rounds and press releases.” But Zoona co-founder Mike Quinn argues that her advice ignores a reality that many investors don’t recognize. Quinn pushes back on Cochran's argument from an entrepreneur's perspective in this compelling counterpoint.
- Categories
- Finance, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Delivering Family Planning to Rural Customers: Are Mobile Pharmacies ‘Just What the Doctor Ordered’?
Pharmacies serve as key access points for family planning products in many emerging markets. In countries like Malawi, the number of pharmacies has ballooned by nearly 100% in the past 10 years. Yet it can be difficult to run a sustainable pharmacy business, especially in rural areas. Andrea Bare and Erika Beidelman at the William Davidson Institute discuss potential solutions – including an innovative mobile pharmacy – based on conversations with Malawian entrepreneurs.
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- Health Care, Telecommunications
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Finding Partners in Uncharted Territory: How to Harness Network Effects to Build Relationships When You’re Starting from Scratch
Learning how to navigate a complex and changing stakeholder landscape is an essential skill for anyone in the social impact space. But how do you go about identifying and building relationships with new partners when you’re charting new geographic or thematic territory? Mari-Lise du Preez at insight2impact discusses network science-based tactics to identify key actors and cultivate strong relationships among them.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- data, financial inclusion, fintech
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Beyond the Bottom Line: How Changing the Supplier-Distributor Dynamic Creates Better Products for People Living in Poverty
A good relationship between suppliers and distributors is crucial when doing business in challenging markets. But in too many cases, these relationships are purely transactional, one-way and unresponsive, say Sahil Khanna at Greenlight Planet and Murli Padmanabhan at Pollinate Group. They explore how their organizations have avoided this pitfall in creating a true partnership that allows them to distribute solar products more effectively to their customers.
- Categories
- Energy
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Three Key Sessions from Three Days of Discussion at European Microfinance Week
European Microfinance Week is always a whirlwind of activity and insights, and this year was no exception. As a media partner at the event, NextBillion covered some of the key sessions. Here we highlight three of them, one from each day of the event – starting with Friday's must-see plenary, which was streamed live and can now be viewed in a video embedded in this article.
- Categories
- Finance
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How Can We Stop Losing Our Minds?: Producing a Legacy From Development Projects, Not Just a Document
Have you ever run, funded or been part of a development project? Have you ever thought: “We should definitely share what we learned?” But then someone wrote a report and that was the end of that. Gavin Starks, the founder of dgen.net, argues that shouldn’t be the end, but the beginning. The power of an open approach to development has many benefits, he says. Done well, it changes the way people collaborate during projects — and helps them produce a legacy, not just a document.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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What Will Last Mile Distribution Look Like in 2025? Six Predictions for an Emerging Sector
From water purifiers to solar lights, the impact-oriented products can’t further development goals if they can't make it to last mile customers. Emma Colenbrader and Charlie Miller of the Global Distributors Collective explain how the organization's 140 member distributors have defied tough odds to get 13 million products and counting into the hands of last mile households. They share a first-of-its-kind report that aims to better understand the markets for these products, the customers being reached – and the business models that can reach them.
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- Energy, Telecommunications, Transportation
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Big Investors Need to Change the Way They Do Business: A Q&A with the GIIN’s Co-Founder and CEO, Amit Bouri
The overall impact investing market portfolio is now estimated at half a trillion dollars. So how are Asia – and specifically India – shaping up in terms of impact investment growth and development? Smarinita Shetty, co-founder and CEO at India Development Review, asks this and other questions in this interview with Amit Bouri, the CEO and co-founder of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Bouri notes that despite several new retail opportunities, it's still not enough to move the needle.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
