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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
- Entrepreneurship, 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
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Go big or go home: How I-DEV is revolutionizing the Kenyan business sector
The firm has helped dozens of small and medium-sized businesses grow and increase their profitability by thinking and working smarter, faster and with more ambitious targets in mind.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
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Virtusa launches API Exchange for financial inclusion
The platform will include an online global FinTech marketplace and sandbox platform. APIX will accelerate financial services innovation and inclusion by enabling collaboration between financial institutions and FinTech innovators.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Billion-dollar tech startups hold promise for China’s economy
Chinese tech companies listed in China and Hong Kong have seen their shares plunge this year, amid a market shakeout. But while the Shanghai Composite Index is down about 20% since the beginning of 2018, analysts say that there is still appetite for good startups.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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South Africa to start building affordable smartphones
Developed by Rwandan businessman and billionaire Ashish Thakkar, the Mara group at the Africa Investment Forum announced ambitious plans to develop manufacturing plants in Rwanda and in South Africa.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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