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Press Release: IFC Backs Paraguay’s First Green Fertilizer Plant, Creating Jobs, Advancing Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security
The project is expected to positively impact employment opportunities, with over 1,265 new direct jobs created during the construction phase, and nearly 200 skilled and semi skilled positions during operations.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
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Uganda’s Zigoti Secures $1 Million Funding From Sahel Capital to Support Smallholder Farmers
Zigoti sources its coffee beans from a network of more than 4,000 smallholder farmers, providing not only a stable market for their harvests but also offering a range of extension services, training programmes, and value-added support aimed at improving crop quality and farmer livelihoods.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Western AI Models “Fail Spectacularly” in Farms and Forests Abroad
Big Tech’s AI tools trained on Western data often can’t recognize local crops, forests, or farming conditions without adaptation to local environments, and there is a risk that a focus on profit by big tech firms and large agriculture companies will hurt farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: Smartphones, Women’s Rights and Coupons: New Trends That Can Boost Insurance for African Farmers
Storms, drought, floods and heatwaves are a disaster for small scale farmers in Africa, who can’t all afford insurance. Yet new, technologically advanced and cheaper types of agricultural insurance exist and could be rolled out across Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Big Tech ‘Leave Poor Farmers Sidelined’ In AI Revolution
The report published Wednesday by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) highlights how tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Alibaba are shaping the future of farming through cloud platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, attracting substantial public and private investment.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: British International Investment and ILX Complete First Joint Investment in Emerging Markets
The $15 million transaction marks ILX’s first sub-participation in a BII investment, since the two institutions formalised their partnership to increase institutional capital flowing into high-impact opportunities in emerging markets.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Global
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Tech Firms and AI Farming Tools ‘Playing With the Food System’, Warns Thinktank
Google, Microsoft and Amazon among companies using algorithms and AI to influence what crops are grown and how, say critics.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Global
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The Impact Sector is Confusing Satisfaction with Impact: Rethinking the Growing Reliance on Perception Surveys
Measurement standards in the impact sector have shifted toward perception surveys — i.e., forms that ask individuals to rate their personal experience with a program or organization — to quantify success. But as Juan Taborda Burgos, Jorge Bouchot and Miranda Hansen at Root Capital argue, perception-based metrics can mask a program’s ineffectiveness, potentially leading organizations to scale interventions that do not work. They share insights from a recent Root Capital report that reveal the downsides of relying solely on perception data, and offer four actionable principles that can help leaders navigate the pressure to demonstrate impact — while avoiding costly mistakes.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise
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