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NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Announcing the Winners of Our Annual Contest
We've counted the votes in NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest, an annual tradition since 2012. The three winners are listed in this article. Congratulations to these guest writers, and to the other contestants in the contest, whose insights have clearly resonated with our readers this past year. And thank you to everyone who voted — and everyone who read and wrote for NextBillion in 2025. Best wishes for the new year!
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications
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Exposure to Hot, Humid Conditions In-Utero Is Dangerous for Child Health: Study
Researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara looked at the effect of prenatal exposure to extremely hot, humid conditions on the health of children in South Asia.
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- Environment, Health Care
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Announcing NextBillion’s Most Influential Articles of 2025: Vote for Your Favorites by Jan. 4
NextBillion’s “Most Influential Articles of the Year” contest has been an annual tradition since 2012. As we do each December, we’ve highlighted 12 of our most-read articles from the past year: You can find links to them in this article, or on the homepage below. We invite you to read them and vote for the ones that influenced your thinking the most. You can vote up to once per hour between today (Dec. 19) and 11:59 pm EST on Jan. 4. We thank you for your support and engagement over these past 20 years, and we wish you a happy and prosperous 2026.
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- Energy, Environment, Finance, Investing, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation
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Global Heat Wave Days Jump to 19.3 a Year: Women in Low- and Middle-Income Nations at High Risk
A review conducted by researchers from The George Institute for Global Health and Imperial College London has found that most heat adaptation efforts in LMICs continue to focus on infrastructure and climate mitigation, with limited attention to health outcomes and significant gaps in gender inclusion.
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- Environment, Health Care
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Green Innovation Fund Backs Green Teams to Tackle Air Pollution in Indonesia
By ensuring every measurement is accurate and reliable, the company turns complex environmental data into actionable insights, supporting smarter decisions that protect public health and reduce the economic costs of pollution.
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- Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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African Development Bank Backs Hyphen with $10 Million Green Hydrogen Project in Namibia
The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) will provide the loan to support front-end engineering design studies for solar and wind generation, battery energy storage systems, electrolyser capacity and desalination infrastructure.
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- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Global Chocolate Supply Chains Exposed to Cocoa-Driven Deforestation in Liberia
The investigation also notes that no cocoa farms in Liberia are certified by the Rainforest Alliance, despite all the named traders claiming to use the scheme. Global Witness said this gap underscores the limitations of voluntary sustainability labels.
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- Agriculture, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- forests, regulations, supply chains
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African Agriculture at a Climate Crossroads: Business Risks and Opportunities as the Continent Navigates the Growing Crisis
Africa’s food systems are under mounting pressure from climate change, as droughts, erratic rainfall, floods and heat waves increasingly undermine both crop and livestock production. But as Asamoah Oppong Zadok at Sustaina Harvest explains, despite the emergence of climate-smart innovations and resilience-focused initiatives, many stakeholders still prioritize short-term fixes and reactive crisis spending that leave deeper vulnerabilities intact. He argues that African agriculture faces a choice: remain trapped in a cycle of repeated shocks and emergency responses — or invest in technologies, ecosystems and people that can turn climate risk into opportunity, building healthy ecosystems and inclusive livelihoods over the long term.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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