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Report: Buy-Now-Pay-Later Reshapes South Africa Credit Landscape
A recent report reveals that BNPL is evolving beyond a simple payment tool and is increasingly serving as an entry point into the formal credit system for millions of consumers.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, e-commerce, fintech, lending, research
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MTN Targets Nigeria’s $236 Billion Credit Gap as its $500 Billion MoMo Business Pushes into Lending
MTN Group is moving to turn its African mobile-money empire into something much bigger than a payments business, as the telecoms giant prepares to separate its fintech operations in Nigeria and Uganda, bring in strategic investors, and push into lending across some of the continent’s most underbanked markets.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Report: 810 Million Women Still Not Using Mobile Internet in Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Compared to 595 Million Men
Persistent barriers such as those related to affordability, skills and safety concerns continue to limit women’s digital inclusion in low- and middle-income countries.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Global
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Nigeria’s CreditChek Raises $600,000 to Expand its Credit Data Infrastructure Across East Africa
With this new funding, CreditChek plans to deepen its integrations across key East African markets, working closely with banks, microfinance institutions, and fintech lenders.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Financing the Future: How Off-Balance-Sheet Special Purpose Vehicles Could Fund Africa’s Cleantech Transition
Across Africa, founders are tackling some of the world’s most difficult development challenges with cleantech solutions that require significant capital expenditure. But according to Julia Lawson-Johns, and Amar Inamdar at KawiSafi Ventures, beneath this wave of innovation lies a capital architecture that is still too shallow to enable the scale these firms now require. They argue that off-balance-sheet financing via special-purpose vehicles could provide cleantech enterprises with an alternative means of securing upfront liquidity to finance growth, and explore how these vehicles could power Africa’s cleantech transition.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Finance, Investing, Transportation
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Africa Jobs Fund Launched to Mobilise $100 Million Philanthropic Investment to Boost Workers’ Incomes
The AJF launches as a fund of Renaissance Philanthropy, the non-profit founded by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg to design and run time-bound, thesis-driven philanthropic funds led by field experts.
- Categories
- Finance, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Deep Pockets’ vs. ‘Long Pockets’ in DPI: What Instant Payments and Open Finance Tell Us About Sustainable Funding for Digital Public Infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is gaining traction in emerging markets around the world. But as David Porteous at Integral: Governance Solutions and Rafe Mazer at Fair Finance Consulting explain, while the financial cost of building DPI may be modest, operating it at scale requires ongoing costs to be allocated across the ecosystem over time, making DPI sustainability fundamentally a governance issue centered on pricing policies. They explore how two of the three broadly accepted categories of DPI, instant payment systems and open finance, can develop credible mechanisms to finance long-term costs — while maintaining incentives for participants and trust among users.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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The Keys to Successful Blue Bonds: How Peru’s Strong Local Lending Systems Are Expanding Water and Sanitation Access
For millions of Peruvian families, one barrier stands between them and safe water and sanitation at home: access to affordable financing. Yet as Rocio Cavazos at Water.org explains, the financial institutions serving these communities face their own barrier: limited access to lower-cost capital. She discusses Water.org's efforts to support Peru’s two successful blue bond issuances, exploring how these bonds can allow lenders to offer more affordable loans for water and sanitation solutions — and sharing lessons from Peru's experience that can be applied by blue bonds in other markets.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing, WASH
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