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Melinda Gates Pushes G7 to Close Digital Gender Gap in Africa
G7 finance ministers meeting in France are to endorse a paper from the Gates Foundation saying there is a serious risk that digital technology and mobile banking will bypass millions of women in Africa, leaving them disempowered for a generation.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Big Data, Big Opportunity: Is Data Science the Key to Universal Energy Access?
Rural dwellers at the base of the pyramid are living largely "data-less," un-digitalized lives – but that's changing quickly with the spread of pay-as-you-go energy and the financial access it enables. In spite of the dangers of wrongly screening out customers as potential credit risks, denying them both further electrification prospects and access to credit, Guilhem Dupuy of GAIA Impact Fund and Thibault Lesueur of Solaris Offgrid take an optimistic view. They discuss why new off-grid energy data is an opportunity for increased investment, industry growth and economic justice.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
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Why Payment Fraud is a Critical Threat to Financial Inclusion – And How Mojaloop is Making it Worse
The next key step in financial inclusion is payment interoperability, in which digital finance providers’ networks are connected to enable transactions between users of different systems. But though interoperability has major potential for the sector, it also comes with huge risks, says Clear Purchase founder Nick Brown, an expert in payment infrastructure. He explains why a massive payment fraud attack could do substantial and long-lasting damage to the financial inclusion movement, and how an open-source platform like the Gates Foundation's Mojaloop increases the risk.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Two Companies Approved To Run South Sudan’s First Mobile Money Platform, m-Gurush
Theventure is a joint partnership between South Sudan’s Trinity Technologies Limited, a local tech firm, and Zain Telcoms South Sudan.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenyan Betting Firms Say Payment Systems Suspended Following Government Order
Online sports betting companies such as SportPesa have grown rapidly in the East African nation in recent years, riding a wave of enthusiasm for sports to achieve combined revenue of 204 billion shillings ($2 billion) last year.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public policy, regulations
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The Gap in Internet Speeds Is Widening Between Low and High Income Countries
While global average speeds increased 20% over the past year, much of that growth has happened in developed nations which are already home to established connectivity infrastructure.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenya Regulators Warn MPs on Safaricom Split Bill
The issue of competition in Kenyan market is an issue politicians and regulators have regularly investigated over the last two years, with calls to spin-out mobile money units nothing new.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How Artificial Intelligence Can Simplify International Development Research: An Intriguing Experiment (Involving NextBillion)
International development professionals must often spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with news, trends and research about their area of activity – and this requires a lot of manual labor. But much of this can now be automated and aided by artificial intelligence (AI). Jacob Rosen and Ashirul Amin at BFA explore how they used AI to sort and categorize a vast amount of development-focused content online, using NextBillion's 5,000+ article library as a test case. The results of their experiment show how AI can help people reduce time and labor and learn more efficiently.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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