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Microloans Aren’t Just for Businesses Anymore: Increasingly they’re helping the poor meet basic needs
A more universal and basic approach for microloans to assist the more than 3 billion people who live on less than $2.50 a day is providing small loans to break up payments for large purchases.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Tags
- infrastructure
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Food prices squeezing poor people and driving social change by stealth
A new era of high and volatile food prices goes beyond affecting what people can afford to eat and is causing life-changing shifts in society, experts warn today.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Tags
- nutrition
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A Plan to Bring Sun-Powered Irrigation to Poor Farmers
A proposed system uses mirrors to increase the power of a solar panel and pump water to crops.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment
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NexThought Monday: How Africa’s prosperity can grow … from trees
if Africa hopes to sustain its impressive economic growth and reign in the impacts of climate change, the continent needs to leverage agroforestry’s dual economic and environmental benefits on a larger scale. Attendees of the World Economic Forum on Africa this past week know that the continent’s economic success depends on private sector participation. But corporations also have a major role to play in boosting the continent’s economy and solving the world’s forestry woes through the field of agroforestry.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Reflections on the next wave of water innovation
Paul Polak believes that the solution to expensive and often dirty diesel powered water pumps in emerging market lies in fundamentally re-engineering the affordability of solar powered (solar photovoltaic) pumps. His new company, SunWater is developing a 2 kilowatt solar-powered pumping system that can do the same job as a 5 horse power diesel pump, coupled with drip irrigation and water storage solutions, to boost yields for small farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
- Tags
- Base of the Pyramid, solar
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NexThought Monday – The BoP Beyond Income Levels: Exploring the ‘opportunity access’ approach
The focus of the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) has been centered almost exclusively in the economic limitations of low-income communities. But in our report, “Understanding the BoP from an Access to Opportunities,” we expand this focus and recognize the multidimensional concepts of poverty, including an analysis of the BoP through their access to a joining of five basic necessities: water, energy, education, housing, and information and communication technology.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Impact Assessment
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African Farmers Celebrate Earth Day By Saving The World
Storms are getting more violent, seasonal patterns are shifting, and the weather is seemingly harder to predict.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Connected: Unleashing Ugandan Farmers’ Potential Through Mobile Phones
A powerful, new mobile platform designed for smallholder farmers that combines agriculture information and financial services to help them harvest bigger profits is going live in Uganda. Modeled on the cloud-based AgriLife, the new platform will be accessible via mobile phone and provide data collection and analysis about farmers’ production capability and history, while providing much-needed services to distant, rural farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology