-
Proparco Invests USD $10 Million in Africa50’s AGIA-PD fund to Accelerate Green Infrastructure Development Across Africa
"Africa faces one of the world's largest infrastructure financing gaps, with annual investment needs estimated at USD 130–170 billion."
-
PIDG and Impact Fund Denmark Invest $11.5 Million in Africa GreenCo
Africa GreenCo is a regional energy trader and intermediary offtaker. It buys electricity from renewable energy producers and sells it to utilities, private-sector customers and markets within the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP). The
- Categories
- Energy, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
From Nano to Investable: Why Formalising MSMEs Hasn’t Led to Scale, and What India Can Do About It
India has achieved something remarkable over the past decade: Millions of once-informal micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have been formalized, and it is now easier to start and register a business, and access credit and government programs and markets. But according to Pranshu Chhabra, Rudra Midhun Kumar and Chiropriya Dasgupta at Quiver, over 99% of these enterprises remain at the "micro" level, and the overwhelming majority of them are classified as “nano,” a subset of the lowest level of the MSME classification. They argue that while India has become very good at bringing enterprises into the formal system, it is struggling to help them move into their next stage of growth: becoming large enough to attract formal investment. They explore this challenge, explaining why the transition from nano to investable cannot be solved by capital alone.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- governance, MSMEs, public policy, scale
-
Odyssey Energy Solutions Raises $74 Million to Accelerate Distributed Renewable Energy Financing in Emerging Markets
The funding will scale Odyssey's platform in regions including Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
- Region
- Global
-
Moving Beyond Grants: How NGOs Can Diversify Toward Earned Revenue, and How Funders Can Support That Transition
The development sector has reached an increasingly firm consensus that it needs to depend less on grants as the aid landscape evolves, and strategies to generate earned revenue have emerged as a key solution for NGOs seeking to remain financially sustainable. But as Toon Driesen at the Enabel Innovation Hub and Alex Losneanu and Pritika Kasliwal at Brink explain, commercializing innovative solutions to complex societal issues typically costs money before it makes money, and early funding support often falls away before a business model can scale. They share research that reveals what NGOs must do differently to execute the transition to an earned revenue model, and explore how funders can help them implement these changes.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
-
An Important Update on ANDE’s Future and Sunsetting Operations
Danielle Baussan, Interim Executive Vice President for Policy Programs at the Aspen Institute has made the difficult decision to wind down ANDE’s operations and sunset the network by November 2026.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Finance, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Region
- Global
-
UK Offers $541 Million Loan to Brazil-led Tropical Forest Fund
"New Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who has focused even more tightly on easing domestic cost-of-living concerns since coming to power in July, has since said some of Britain's international climate contributions should be made in the form of loans, not grants."
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Latin America
-
Mars Impact Fund Awards More Than $13 Million in New Grants to Advance Community Resilience, Science Pipelines and Companion Animal Wellbeing
New investments across Côte d’Ivoire, India, the United States and Thailand will expand community health and economic resilience for cocoa-growing and mint-farming families, build pipelines for the next generation of scientists, and drive last-mile rabies elimination.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Investing, WASH
- Region
- Global
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.