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Social Business Roundup: Building Our Immunity to Anti-Vaxxers, Solar Loans With a Side of Health, and SRI Goes Robo
There’s a crisis of trust in the world, some of it well earned – and some, like skepticism about vaccines, completely unwarranted. We cover an alarming uptick in the anti-vax movement's profile, an effort to pair solar loans with health care in Ghana, and the emergence of "robo-SRI" in this news roundup.
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Zimbabwe Off-Grid Solar Start-up Lands Kiva Direct to Social Enterprise Loan
Off-grid solar start-ups are cropping up across sub-Saharan Africa, conveying the advantages and benefits of reliable, affordable, safe and environmentally friendly electrical power to local communities at an unprecedented rate. It’s not the sort of “big” business that makes major business news headlines, but Africa’s solar start-ups are having an outsized, positive impact and proving that a little bit can go a long way.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- social enterprise, solar
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East Africa’s ‘largest’ solar plant now in operation
What is claimed to be East Africa’s largest solar offering is now online in the form of the 10MW PV plant in Soroti, Uganda. Located on just over 13 hectares of land and comprised of 32,680 modules, the facility is also the country’s first grid-connected plant and will provide enough clean energy to power 40,000 homes.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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Google Will Soon Deliver on 100% Renewables Promise
Sometime within the next 12 months, internet search and cloud services giant Google will be buying enough clean power on an ongoing basis to account for the electricity needs of both its 13 data centers (so far) and offices in more than 150 cities around the world.
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- renewable energy
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Africa Finds Power Off the Grid
But recently those in areas without electricity are taking advantage of an alternative to traditional electric hookups that could help solve Africa’s power problem: off-grid solar home systems, which electrify houses with a battery-connected rooftop panel.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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IBUILD Paves Way for Housing Development in Kenya
Kenya’s problems with real estate are well known: with a supply shortage of over two million houses and over 90% of the construction workforce not formally registered with the government, development is often erratic and informal. In the spring of 2015 a tech-enabled solution was set up by affordable housing and urban renewal organization Builders of Hope (BOH), with an aim of allowing people to build for themselves and to help the workforce find job opportunities.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- employment, housing
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Cold Hub introduces solar-powered storage facility to empower Nigerian entrepreneurs
To ensure a greater part of the country’s farm yield does not get wasted due to challenges emanating from either erratic power supply or storage facilities reliant on power, Nigerian Cold Hub company has developed a solar-powered food storage design, Cold Hub, to empower small, medium and large scale farmers.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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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