-
Three Steps to Jumpstart Agriculture Mobile Payments: Step 3 – Overcoming farmers’ illiteracy, financial illiteracy and lack of trust
In the third and final post in his series on embedding mobile payments by large buyers to farmers into agricultural value chains, Lee Babcock considers the need to overcome farmers’ illiteracy, financial illiteracy and, perhaps most importantly, lack of trust.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
Using mobile money to buy water and solar power in east Africa
Mobile phones are facilitating access to utilities in poor rural communities. But do consumers have the faith to go cashless?
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- solar
-
It’s About Time, It’s Also About Culture: How do varying cultural perspectives about time and productivity impact social enterprises?
Andrea Trice is researching how “soft” factors such as mutual understanding and trust influence the success of a social enterprise. While it’s too early to draw conclusions, Trice notes that it’s difficult to overestimate the role of culture in shaping how each of us thinks and acts, and therefore how businesses succeed or fail.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Social Enterprise
-
Your Coffee Is Getting Fancier, But Is It Getting Better For The World?
Fair-Trade certified coffee has become known as an easy way for coffee drinkers to make the world a better place for coffee growers, many of whom are among the world’s poorest people. But a study released in April 2014 seriously questions how much fair-trade certification really does for them.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Three Steps to Jumpstart Agriculture Mobile Payments: Step 2 – forming strategic alliances
In the second of a three-part series laying out three steps for embedding mobile money into agriculture development at the BoP, Lee Babcock explores the importance of strategically aligning large commodity buyers with mobile financial services providers and other supporting entities that work with smallholder farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
-
India’s Welcome Reform Of Its Ghastly Food Aid Program
India is making essential changes to the way that it operates its food aid program for the poor.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
-
Sustainable Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation: Lessons learned from market-based approaches in India
After working with a number of key players in the water and sanitation business, the author, Urvashi Prasad, has compiled a list of factors that could enable for-profit players to fulfill the dual objectives of making profits and doing social good by bringing essential services to people who need them the most.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
-
Three Steps to Jumpstart Mobile Finance: Step 1 – Researching smallholders’ financial behavior to help them transition to mobile payments
It’s becoming increasingly clear that cash payment schemes are obsolete in the 21st century, says Lee Babcock. And in agriculture, there’s a growing recognition that enabling digital payments to smallholders is a huge opportunity, both for farmers and the mobile finance sector. In this three-part series, Babcock lays out three steps for embedding mobile money into agriculture development at the BoP.
- Categories
- Agriculture