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Creative Climbing: How Impact Enterprises are Overcoming Obstacles in East Africa
In 2016, Intellecap undertook a study to better understand how East African impact entrepreneurs manage to design viable business models despite the various market challenges. The insights from the study can inform inclusive development in the region and across the global south. The study classified impact enterprises across three levers based on their interaction with the BoP: access, ability and knowledge.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Find Good Partners and Don’t Quit: Lessons from a Water-Ag Innovator
Bart A.J. de Jonge and Si Technologies came up with a way to protect farmers around the world and their crops against increasingly common droughts that devastate local communities. He wanted to get the product in the hands of hands of millions of subsistence farmers quickly, but it took years, for a variety of reasons. Here, he offers advice to other social entrepreneurs, including this: "Change is a long haul, but don’t give up."
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Exeo Capital Agri-Vie Fund II Attracts Over $100 Million
EXEO Capital, the pan-African private equity investment firm, has announced the first close of the second Agri-Vie Fund, focused on the food and agribusiness sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, after attracting commitments of over $100 million, one third more than the initial target.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- impact investing
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Gates, Mastercard Launch New Platform for Smallholder Farmers
Digital technology has long been touted as the key to helping smallholder farmers around the world overcome barriers that have kept them trapped in poverty, though initial innovations did not always deliver on this promise. Now developers of digital tools for agriculture are trying to refine their offerings, focusing on products that farmers want to use and that align with their priorities. And at the top of that list is getting fair prices for their products.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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MasterCard Thinks Small With Microcommerce Platform in Africa
For some financial-services giants, the next big thing is micro, and unbanked customers are the entry point. The latest example is MasterCard, which is getting into microcommerce in Kenya with the launch of a new mobile platform that lets consumers buy goods with cash, mobile money, or bank transfer using their phones. The service, called 2Kuze, is aimed at Kenyan farmers and their customers and may mark the beginning of a deeper journey into mobile money products.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Social Business Roundup: An SDG Lovefest at Davos, a New Rival for M-Pesa and a Really Big Direct Investment Fund
Has the World Economic Forum in Davos lost its relevance? Not to the folks gathered there this week who were knee-deep in talk about sustainable investing and social enterprise. Those discussions are only the start of a jam-packed Roundup this week. There's also a new mobile platform by MasterCard that could rival M-Pesa in Kenya, plans for a $2 billion direct investment fund, and plenty more ...
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
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Mastercard Delivering Financial Inclusion: One Small Kenyan Farm At A Time
The problem with building financial inclusion — particularly in a developing world context — is that it is a tough goal to pursue directly. While there isn’t much in the way of disagreement that more should be done to connect the approximately 2.5 billion adults who are totally (or nearly totally) detached from formal financial services, actually implementing a plan that actually makes a difference is often a very separate matter.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Can the Mobile Phone Call Youth Back to the Farm?
This post by Christopher Burns and Milani Chatterji-Len, about how mobile phones can offer youth a pathway back to the farm, was October's most popular article. It's the latest entrant in our Most Influential Post of 2016 contest. Please read or re-read the posts and then vote for your favorite(s). Voting ends Jan. 2, and we'll name the winner on Jan. 4.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology