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Solutions to the Care Crisis: How Social Enterprises and Impact Investing Can Transform the Care Economy
The care economy – i.e., paid and unpaid care provided to children, the elderly, and those with illnesses or disabilities – is central to our society’s well-being and to the broader economy. But according to analysts at IDRC, E. T. Jackson and Associates Ltd., and the Soros Economic Development Fund, COVID-19 has worsened the challenges facing these primarily female workers. They explore some innovative market-based solutions to these issues, and discuss how impact investors and other stakeholders can better support care workers, particularly in the Global South.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Tencent Leads $48 Million Investment in South Africa Startup
Tencent Holdings Ltd. has invested in a South African financial-technology provider helping the Chinese internet giant expand in the continent’s most developed economy.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Embracing Digital Solutions in Last Mile Distribution: Six Steps for Introducing New Tools to Sales Agents
COVID-19 has accelerated the shift towards greater digitalization that was already well underway in the last mile distribution sector. According to Gerwin Jansen and Yvonne Achieng at Bopinc, more digital services are coming onto the market to meet this demand – but regardless of the benefits of these tools, if sales agents don’t embrace them the business impacts will not be realized. They explore how last mile distributors can successfully embed digital solutions in their sales teams, presenting a six-step approach to rolling out new digital services to agents.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Analysis: What We Need To Do to Really Empower and Enable Women in India
Institutions working for women empowerment need to look beyond the simple measures, and into gaps of skilling, financing, and a social safety net for women in rural and semi-urban areas
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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From Problem to Profit: Rewiring the E-Waste Value Chain in Africa
Africa is home to bountiful reserves of metals and minerals, but these resources have not unleashed widespread economic growth. However, as Anne Cathrine Garde and Blessing Layee-Maima Caine at the BESTSELLER Foundation explain, an “urban mine” is quietly growing on the continent, in the form of discarded electronic devices loaded with precious metals. They discuss how trailblazing trash entrepreneurs are tapping the riches sitting in Africa's overflowing landfills, and turning this problem into profit by rewiring the broken e-waste value chain.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology, WASH
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Beyond Energy Efficiency: Key Trends and Pathways to Scale in the Solar Appliance Market
Solar appliance uptake is a key element of global energy access efforts. But according to Yasemin Erboy Ruff and Lauren Boucher at CLASP, no appliance is close to reaching market saturation, despite considerable gains in recent years. They share highlights from Efficiency for Access' 2021 Solar Appliance Technology Briefs, which characterize the market, trends and pathways to scale for 11 off-grid-appropriate solar appliances and enabling technologies, and explore what these findings mean for the solar appliance market and the customers it serves.
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Technology
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Kinara Capital Secures $9.3 Million From Invest in Visions GmbH
Classified as an ESG Impact Fund by the European Union, Kinara Capital will further IIV’s microfinance fund mandate of enabling credit access to small businesses.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Investing
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Analysis: Gender Inequality in Chad and the Impact of COVID-19
In Chad, only half of women participate in the labor force in contrast with nearly three-quarters of men. As this column reports, during the pandemic things got worse: Covid-19 forced some of the sectors in which women are mostly employed to shut down.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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