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Kenyan women make a healthy profit selling aloe to cosmetics firm
Women herders in Kenya's semi-arid Laikipia County have broken with tradition to export the leaves of a desert plant to Europe, boosting their incomes.Three hundred women in El Poloi have switched from the age-old occupation of goat-keeping to the new and far more lucrative activity of farming aloe, a plant with healing properties.Along the way, they are transforming their economic status and creating educational opportunities for their daughters.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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We’re Learning How to Sell Toilets in West Africa
With the excitement and buzz of World Water Day behind us I’m left both inspired and concerned. I’m inspired because there is a growing understanding by WASH professionals that it will take market development and systemic change to truly solve the problem. These methods look overall at what is working and not working in terms of WASH services for populations at risk across value chains and within the market system, and then, based on that analysis, develop targeted interventions with pro-poor innovations to make markets work. What is also exciting is the impact that adopting and implementing these approaches might have on the development sector in general.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Latin American Organizations Campaign to Ban Monsanto
Doctors, scientists and environmentalists in Argentina, and across Latin America, are demanding a ban on Monsanto products.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
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The Art of Saving – Look to the Giraffe, the Ant and the Zebra: A parable informs financial inclusion training in Ethiopia
My Amharic skills are basic at best, but I have managed to learn the names of a few animals, including “gundan,” which means ant. In the middle of a recent savings and credit training session we conducted with farmers in northern Ethiopia, one trainer used the word "gundan." "What does an ant have to do with savings?" I asked.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Mali’s Farmers Count on National Fund to Expand Climate Insurance
A lack of rain in the middle of last season caused Seydou Diarassouba's sorghum crop to fail.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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On Earth Day, a Good Time to Celebrate Wangari Maathai Vision
Before she passed on, the Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai left an enduring legacy. The Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organisation she founded to eradicate poverty through environmental conservation, reached a significant milestone: planting over 50 million trees in Africa. But in spite of that incredible achievement, her life’s work was more about human regeneration.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Village Women Run Safe Water Franchises in Arsenic-Hit India, Bangladesh
Rural housewives in countries such as India and Bangladesh, where ground water has high levels of arsenic, are being encouraged to set up businesses to sell safe water to save lives in their communities and earn some income.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
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Why Water Is Key to Beating Poverty
Extreme poverty is one of humanity's grave injustices. Across the world, more than 1 billion people live on less than $1.50 a day for all their needs -- food, housing, medicine, water, sanitation, everything. What's more astonishing is that 748 million people around the world do not have access to clean water. And 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation -- that's one out of every three individuals on the planet. Think about that for a second.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care