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The Key to Fighting Poverty in Africa: Could unlocking smallholder finance solve both the continent’s food and employment challenges?
Small and mid-sized agribusinesses are a vital link in Africa’s local and regional agriculture markets. They're also key to building an inclusive African economy able to absorb a workforce that’s set to double in size over the next 25 years, and to feeding a continent that is hungrier now than ever. There’s only one problem: Commercial banks won’t lend to them.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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MasterCard Foundation to Invest in Ugandan Companies
Uganda is among eight countries set to receive USD50m (Sh177b) by the Master Card Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity to fund innovations aimed at improving access to finance in rural populations in sub Saharan Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NexThought Monday – Power in Numbers: How organizing, even informally, benefits smallholder farmers
Markets don't address the needs of smallholder farmers. To remain competitive, these farmers will have to join forces with other smallholders and the external community will need to assist them by encouraging and enabling the formation of farmers' organizations.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Across Africa, a New Kind of Container Garden Is Changing Women’s Lives
Some people have the talent to take a simple idea and adapt it into a solution with far-reaching benefits. Take Veronica Kanyango of Zimbabwe, a grassroots organizer who works in home-based health care and hospice for people with HIV/AIDS. She’s managed to take a couple of bags full or dirt and turn them into an agrarian movement.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Banana Has Potential’: From a field school to commercial venture, Nyangorora provides a sustainable model for smallholder farmers
Nyangorora Banana Processors is a collaboration between farmers, research institutes, development partners and county governments that has evolved over time and could present a sustainable way of enhancing access to markets for smallholder farmers in developing countries.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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President Obama Announces Major Progress Through Feed the Future Initiative
On July 28 President Obama announced that Feed the Future, his signature global hunger and food security initiative, is delivering on his promise to reduce hunger and malnutrition through agricultural development. New data demonstrate that, thanks in part to Feed the Future and other U.S. Government efforts, stunting rates have declined in Ethiopia, Ghana, and parts of Kenya by between 9 and 33 percent in recent years, while areas in Uganda have seen a 16 percent drop in poverty.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- nutrition
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The Financial Power of the Group: How demand aggregation can enable consumer financing for renewable energy products
Salt farmers in Northern India use diesel pumps to help them harvest salt from sea water. They run these pumps for over 16 hours a day, which means up to 60 percent of their income is spent on fuel costs. Solar pumps could substantially increase their income, so Dalberg explored financing options that could make these pumps accessible. They discuss demand aggregation, one particularly promising solution.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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Financing Agribusinesses in Africa: Mobile Money Shows More Viability
As a result of mobile money financing schemes, farming businesses, most of which are in rural areas in Africa are able to enjoy agritrade financing in form of loans, subsidies and free inputs facilitated mainly through phones. The main advantage of mobile money financing for agriculture is the elimination of cash handling by other individuals during the transfer of the money from the financing individual/organisation to the farmer or agribusiness operator. This reduces or eliminates corruption, outright theft or violence that could result when individuals have to carry cash around.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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