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Agriculture Insurance Turning Around Farmers’ Lives in East Africa
Jackie Kiconco sits in her garden with her right hand supporting her chin. Her eyes are gazing across the maize garden that she had planted but because of late rainfall, the seeds failed to germinate.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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$10 million Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to support smallholder farmers
Unilever, Acumen and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, have launched a landmark Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action called the Enhanced Livelihoods Investment Initiative (ELII) to improve the livelihoods of as many as 300,000 smallholder farmers and their communities in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Premature Innovation: What happens when a social entrepreneur has a great business idea in a market that isn’t ready for it?
Mauricio Monjaras Cabañas founded GRIMA Biodiesel at the age of 21, a social enterprise that aimed to produce renewable fuel from castor beans. The fuel was touted as cheaper than diesel, better for the environment, and a boon to local farmers. But when he tried to launch his business, complications quickly set in. He discusses his struggles in this post, the latest in our series on social enterprise failures.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment
- Tags
- renewable energy
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NexThought Monday – Why Exiting Our MFI was the Best Way to Ramp Up Impact
In 2009 Sammie Rayner co-founded a microfinance nonprofit called Lumana, which was designed to provide loans and financial services in rural Ghana. Four years later Lumana’s MFI operations were spun off in a deal with a Ghanian NGO. In discussing their decision to exit, she cautions nonprofits against getting too attached to the ongoing survival of their mission.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Weekly Roundup – 2/7/15: Debt and Forgiveness: A drastic solution to over-indebtedness among the poor
Seven years after a financial crisis caused in part by excess debt, all the world’s major economies have higher levels of borrowing than they did in 2007, said a report released this week. Meanwhile, one country has responded to excess debt among the poor by forcing lenders to forgive it. We discuss these developments, and some great financial inclusion news coming out of India, in this Roundup.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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The True Measure of Land’s Value
In working with women to increase family income, we might launch initiatives that increase household income and help the family out of the poverty trap. But women, the primary stakeholders of these initiatives, will still be trapped in their underprivileged status within the family and society.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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How to Make Good on Gates’ Big Bets? : By doubling down on bundled solutions
The Bill and Melinda Gates’ 2015 letter identifies four “big bets” that could lead us to a future with vastly reduced levels of poverty. At the Grameen Foundation we are bundling two of these “bets” - financial services with practical information on good farming practices - into a unified push to reduce rural poverty.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Press Release: Better Than Cash Alliance Study Shows Colombia’s Digital Payment Tool for Coffee Farmers Is a Model to Replicate
The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) Smart Coffee ID Card (CCI), launched in 2006, has become a vital tool for financial inclusion and change in the productive dynamics of Colombia´s rural sector, according to the Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA), a United Nations alliance of governments, companies and the development community committed to the global transition from cash to electronic payments.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
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