-
For Nuru, Energy Applies to Products and Microfranchises
Nuru Energy uses a multi-tier approach to developing and selling renewable energy devices, while steadily building a network of entrepreneurs. In September, Nuru will open offices in Uganda and Kenya, and plans to close the year with 170 microfranchises in Rwanda alone. The growth plans do not stop there.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Exploding Malaria With Human-Sized Microwaves
Around the world almost a million people die from malaria each year, and half the planet's population, 3.3 billion people, live at risk of contracting the disease , mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Treatments for malaria, however, have never been a high priority for pharmaceutical companies. Most victims have little or no ability to pay, and profit margins on vaccines are thin. Now, our few lines of defen...
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Low Maintenance, Low Cost, X-Runner Redefining the Toilet
X-Runner, a social venture based in Germany and India that has designed a low-cost mobile toilet suitable for urban slum households. The portable, low-water toilet is made of light-weight PPC material and costs $30 per unit. Included in that cost is a home service to remove the waste and deliver it to local biogas plant for eventual biogas use.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment
-
Social Enterprise Spotlight: Just Markets For Ghana?s Women
Three years ago Danielle Grace Warren had gone fishing. She was part of a mission to build fish farms in Ghana. These farms, it was hoped, would help generate badly needed income and jobs. The literally graceful and ballerina-like Warren, a creative writer, knew from her experience in Haiti where she had worked on economic development projects that income and jobs were the key to lifting the Ghanaians out of poverty. But they needed to be lots of income and jobs. That simply wasn’t possib...
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Friday Roundup – 8/5/11 – ?Everything is a Remix?
We often confuse innovation with invention. But nothing is ever original; any innovation is just remix of things that came before and reassembled. Our staff and guest writers had a lot to say about innovation this week, both in terms of conceptual thinking around creating something new and regarding concrete innovations to reduce poverty.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Partnerships, Private Sector, Tech Dominate SID
With an international financial system teetering, the Horn of Africa marred by famine, and aid dollars jeopardized by domestic politics, the Society for International Development’s triennial World Congress held in Washington this weekend was in no short supply of substance or imperatives.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- nutrition, partnerships
-
Recruiting Women To The Burgeoning (But Mostly Male) Host Of Angel Investors
Women philanthropists have traditionally stood back from venture capital startups and angel investing; only 13% of angel investors in the U.S. are women. That’s why Natalia Oberti Noguera, a 2005 Yale graduate, founded an angel-investing bootcamp for women. Created to increase the ratio of women angel investors in the social good category, Oberti Noguera’s Pipeline Fellowship is announcing a call for applications for women philanthropists who want to be angel investors in s...
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
-
In Next Practice Collaborative, Top Companies Transition To Low-Carbon Future
CK Prahalad described benchmarking corporate performance against tomorrow’s emerging opportunities as ’next practice’. This week, WRI announced the Next Practice Collaborative with a cross-sector group of major companies to examine new business and finance models for low-carbon economic growth in major markets, including Mexico, India and Brazil.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care