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Microfinance Lenders in Sierra Leone Accused of ‘Payday Loan’ Interest Rates
A Guardian investigation into a microfinance programme run by Brac found that the NGO’s staff were failing to fully explain the conditions of the loan to borrowers.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: QuickCheck partners with Jumia & PayAttitude for further Financial Inclusion in Nigeria
QuickCheck’s affiliation with Jumia will allow customers to easily take loans on a mobile app they are already actively using.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Tech Revolution in Financial Inclusion is Excluding Last-Mile Customers: Here are Four Ways to Reach Them
The world is experiencing a surge in internet access, with almost 300 million new users in 2019 – and this growth is happening especially in developing countries. But in many communities, this access is unreliable and unevenly distributed, say Rodrigo de Reyes and Mauricio Romero at Fundación Capital – and this has serious repercussions for digital and financial inclusion. They explore four key ways to deal with this challenge when serving last-mile customers.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Africa’s Fintech Boom Is Creating Niche Ecosystems to Power the Industry’s Future Globally
Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos all rank among the top 100 cities for fintech ecosystems, keeping with a trend which sees nearly half of the top 100 cities located in emerging markets.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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African Development Bank to Launch $270M Fund for Social Impact Investors
The African Development Bank is setting up a new US$270m social impact fund to support small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Brazilian FinTech Rebel Lands $10M For Affordable Loan Products
"Traditional banks claim that credit in Brazil is expensive because of delinquency rates; but in reality, delinquency is high because the country has the highest interest rates in the world. It is a perverse and vicious cycle, and a difficult one to overturn. That’s why we are rebels: Our goal is to break up with this loop and start a new and virtuous cycle.”
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- fintech
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Kenya’s Safaricom Tests New Mobile Savings Service
Policymakers say the East African nation suffers from a low national savings rate and analysts said Safaricom could be looking to target that untapped market with the new product, dubbed “Mali” (Kiswahili for wealth).
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Lessons From M-Pesa for Africa’s New VC-Rich Fintech Startups
Over the last decade, Africa has been in the midst of a startup boom accompanied by big growth in VC and improvements in internet and mobile penetration.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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