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A Roadmap to Food Security: Linking Geodata with Financial Inclusion to Support Smallholders
Smallholder farmers produce a staggering 70 percent of the world’s food, making them essential to food security. Geodata applications have been shown to improve these farmers’ yields and even boost their financial access – one of the main obstacles to increasing production. To help tap into these benefits, NpM’s Innovator’s Challenge brought together 17 tech companies with geodata-based solutions for smallholder financial inclusion. NpM director Josien Sluijs discusses the winning companies, and the broader potential of geodata-based innovation.
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- Agriculture, Finance, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Emerging Economies ‘More Open’ To AI For Business Management
The research study implied that although 84% of respondents think AI will make their job more interesting and effective, less than half that amount would trust its advice in business decisions.
- Categories
- Technology
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How Facebook uses ‘WhatsApp phones’ to tap next emerging market
Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent, and India’s richest man, who started Reliance Jio, are teaming up to draw hordes of customers with cheap phones, rock-bottom rates and handy messaging services.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Google Impact Challenge Kenya Finalists Unveiled
Google has announced the 12 finalists for the first Google Impact Challenge in Kenya, which sought to identify and fund the most innovative social enterprises using technology to improve society on a local or national scale.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Gamblers’ paradise: Kenyans’ love for betting and thirst for quick cash
Kenyan gamblers' gold mine booms as the number of registered betting firms in the country rise to 36, four of them in the last seven months.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: The Technology Space Is Rapidly Evolving in Africa, and It’s Not All Good News
The lack of technology policy and its poor implementation can lead to economic and political instability, and the effects of this are magnified in African countries with weak rule of law.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Inexpensive Impact: The Case for Frugal Innovations
Over 4 billion people around the world lack necessities like food, water, energy, health care and housing. This represents not only a major social challenge but a major market, as low-income consumers have an annual purchasing capacity of US $5 trillion. Rajat Chabba and Sheena Raikundalia at Intellecap explore how entrepreneurs are developing innovative, frugal products to meet these customers’ needs – and why an ecosystem approach is needed to help them scale their solutions.
- Categories
- Technology
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The Future of Fintech is Now: Takeaways from Harvard’s Rethinking Financial Inclusion 2018
Those looking to technology to boost financial inclusion should stay focused on problems rather than solutions. That may sound counterintuitive, but Michael Fryar at Harvard's Evidence for Policy Design cautions that it's tantalizingly easy to treat fresh tech like a shiny new hammer and every problem as a nail. Fryar discusses this and other key insights from the recent "Rethinking Financial Inclusion" program at Harvard Kennedy School.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology