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Matt Damon’s Impact Investing Fund Backs CreditAccess Grameen
Mumbai-listed CreditAccess provides group lending products as well as retail finance products. It also offers access to non-financial services such as customer awareness and education programmes and sanitation efforts.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Press Release: MCE Social Capital Receives $3.7 Million Grant
Capital infusion will fund more loans to small and growing businesses in rural Africa and other emerging markets, and serve as a match to attract new guarantors.
- Categories
- Investing
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Closing in on the SDG Home Stretch: A Q&A with Florian Kemmerich and Lucica Ditiu at SDG500
Six new funds comprise the new SDG500 initiative – a first-of-its-kind, $500 million investment platform aimed at accelerating progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Florian Kemmerich at Bamboo Capital Partners and Lucica Ditiu of the Stop TB Partnership spoke with NextBillion to share a behind-the-scenes look at how the initiative aims to reach its goals by 2030.
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Social Enterprise Ghana begins advocacy for impact investing policy
Social Enterprise Ghana with funding from BUSAC, DANIDA and USAID has begun advocacy to ensure policymakers and government pass and adopt the social enterprise and impact investing policy. According to Edwin Zu-Cudjoe, the Executive Director of Social Enterprise Ghana, the policy will enable the over 28,000 social enterprises operating in the country to be recognised as such and be able to register as social enterprises with the Registrar General's Department.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Unlocking Off-Grid Energy Finance: What Options Are Available for the Last Mile?
Extending the power grid to underserved communities is often prohibitively expensive. That's why decentralized renewable energy (DRE) is increasingly recognized as an essential approach. However, investments remain focused on grid-connected electricity, with only 1.2% directed towards DRE solutions in 2017. Surabhi Rajagopal and Eco Matser at Hivos explore challenges and solutions in financing energy access through DRE.
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Investing from the ‘Frontier of the Frontier’: Lessons from Ten Years as an Investment Advisor in Africa
With six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies, Africa is an attractive target for investors. But investing there doesn’t always come easy. Ten years ago, Andreas Zeller moved to Nairobi and co-founded Open Capital Advisors, which helps investors access African markets, and helps African businesses become investment-ready. In this interview, Zeller discusses how development and donor agencies can remove the barriers to investment throughout the continent.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: We Must Invest Differently to Support Women and Girls
Many of the structural issues at the root of gender inequality are locked in and magnified by our current financial system.
- Categories
- Investing
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The Clock is Ticking on Energy Access: Exploring Factor[e] Ventures’ Big Bet on Mini-Grids
Since 2010, the number of people without energy access has decreased from almost 1.2 billion to 840 million. But while that's encouraging, the world is not on track to meet SDG7’s goal of universal electrification. What's more, as Amanda DelCore at Factor[e] Ventures points out, more connections may not always equal more access. In light of these realities, she explores why Factor[e] has built its energy access thesis around mini-grids.