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Young, African, Employed – How A Ugandan Startup Aims to Mobilize the Continent’s Youth
Almost 80 percent of Ugandans are below the age of 30 – and many of them are struggling to generate a reliable livelihood. Hire the Youth is addressing this issue through online and in-person programs advancing youth employment and education, using a hybrid non-profit and for-profit model. Its founder, Ssenkubuge Kenneth, discusses the challenges the startup has faced – and how it has overcome them – as it aims to expand its services into other African countries.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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Press release: Mindtree.org Launches Social Inclusion Platform to Democratize Technology for Micro-Entrepreneurs
The purpose of the Mindtree.org digital platforms is to make digital technology and professional services accessible to millions of local entrepreneurs working in the informal economy. These initiatives help to set up profitable micro-businesses, connected communities and networked marketplaces, improving their income and standard of living.
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- Entrepreneurship, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Turning Saris into Stainless Steel: How the Companies of the Future Can Learn from Business Models of the Past
In India in the 1970s, tens of thousands of itinerant street vendors carried stainless steel kitchenware products from door to door, bartering them for saris and other old clothes in a complex, multi-tiered supply chain. According to Prashant Yadav at Harvard Medical School, these vendors’ business model – like others from past decades – holds valuable lessons for modern enterprises working in challenging markets. He shares some of these insights – and encourages others to do likewise – in this fascinating article.
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- Entrepreneurship
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12 social enterprises share $2m Google Impact Challenge prize
Google has announced winners of the maiden edition of its Google Impact Challenge in Nigeria, where 12 non-profits and social enterprises shared $2m in grant funding.
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- Entrepreneurship, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: Why Social Entrepreneurs Are So Burned Out
Helping those most in need and running a commercially viable business at the same time can create conflicting of goals. Our research, which explores how this conflict manifests itself in the lives of entrepreneurs working within for-profit companies, provides the first robust evidence that it can have serious repercussions for their health and wellbeing.
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- Entrepreneurship
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Social Innovation Needs Data, This Free Platform Provides It
New social innovations are exciting, but there’s also great value in scaling existing solutions that show promise. There’s just one problem with this approach, says Sweta Govani: The information about these innovations is incomplete, complicated and fragmented, making it hard to determine which ones deserve support. She discusses a new solution called Global Innovation Exchange, a free, data-driven technology platform that gives funders, social entrepreneurs and others easy access to high-quality, up-to-date information about existing global development innovations.
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- Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Are the days of the African unicorn numbered?
Hopes of seeing an African unicorn on the horizon have been floated around for years, but increasingly, investors are changing their focus. The emerging consensus is that Africa needs to forget about “mythical” unicorns, and focus on building more successful local companies.
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- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NB Quick Takes: Polman’s Out at Unilever – Let the Legacy Debate Begin!
In case you hadn't heard: Paul Polman is retiring as CEO of Unilever at the end of the year. Perhaps no other executive has been as closely associated with corporate social responsibility as Polman, who put social impact at the forefront of his agenda. That's not to say all of his initiatives were successful, nor were they without detractors – his retirement is sparking lots of discussion about his approach and its effectiveness at Unilever, not to mention its influence across the business world. We've gathered some early Twitter reactions in this post.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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