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10 Developments Shaping Smallholder Finance in Africa
This post tackles a tough question: How do we reduce the risk of agricultural activities so that financial institutions will provide loans to small farmers in developing countries? It proved to be the most popular article on NB in August, and thus earned a spot in our annual Most Influential Post contest. We're publishing a new entrant in the contest every day through Jan. 2 and we'll announce the winner Jan. 4.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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NextBillion’s Most Influential Post of the Year Contest 2016
All our posts discuss important topics. Some, however, are so well-written and well-read that they change and even lead that discussion. Those are the ones that are included in our fifth annual Most Influential Post of the Year Contest. Please read or re-read the posts and then vote for your favorite(s). You may vote up to a dozen times. Voting ends Jan. 2, and we'll name the winner on Jan. 4.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Investing
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Superstrains of Rice That Will Feed A Changing World
“I’m Swamp Girl,” says Indrastuti Rumanti, a bubbly scientist with the Indonesian Center for Rice Research. She’s just ducked out of a lengthy meeting with her fellow rice-heads here in Bogor, but the conference room is not Rumanti’s preferred habitat: She’d rather be mucking about in experimental rice paddies.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- research
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Turning Cassava into Gold: Small Producer Taps into Big Demand in Kenya
The founder and managing director of Mhogo Foods in Kenya has found a niche processing cassava into gluten-free flour, starch and animal feed, and sees a bright future for Kenyan cassava farmers and processors like herself. “Cassava is a drought-resistant crop not very hard to care for in the farm," especially when compared to maize, she said. "That is why I process it.”
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Indian social enterprises have huge potential: British Council report
A majority (53%) of social enterprises in India are focussed on skill development, followed by 30% on education, according to a study on Indian social enterprises relased by the British Council on Thursday.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
- Region
- South Asia
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Indonesia’s farmers to enjoy microloan boon next year
Indonesian farmers can expect to find a micro-credit program specifically designed to fulfill their financing needs next year. On Tuesday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo called on his Cabinet to design a micro-credit program specifically designed for the agriculture sector to increase the amount of financing farmers could receive. He acknowledged that the current micro-credit program was too broad.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
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Weekly Roundup: Mossy Green Solutions, Trickle-up Economics, World Toilet Day Woes
What’s innovative about moss, and how can the flowerless plant help pull people out of poverty? Electric vehicles can change the world if they’re adopted by those living at the base of the pyramid? Should all social venture investors separate financial from social impacts in their annual reports? Several questions and a few answers in this week's roundup.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment
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‘Doing Good By Doing Deals’: How Law Students Help Social Entrepreneurs Help Small Farmers
The International Transactions Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School works with social entrepreneurs who are inventing new ways to strengthen agriculture in rural Africa, improving agricultural inputs, developing sustainable practices and building supply chains. They all operate in a legal no-man’s land between existing nonprofit and for-profit regimes, which means that both the social entrepreneurs and their legal counsel need to be especially enterprising.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise