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In 2016, Intel’s Entire Supply Chain Will Be Conflict-Free
Seven years ago, if you bought a new iPhone or a laptop, you were probably also inadvertently supporting warlords and mass rapists in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country has some of the world's largest deposits of many of the tiny bits of metal, like tin and tungsten, that make up electronics, and they often came from mines whose profits were used to fund the country's ongoing, devastating civil war. Luckily, that's starting to change.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- supply chains
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Kenya’s Mobile Penetration Hits 88 Percent
According to the quarterly sector statistics report by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), the uptake of mobile services by Kenyans continued to grow leading to mobile penetration growing to 88.1per cent with 37.8million subscribers up from 36.1 million in the previous quarter.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Will 2016 Be the Year of FinTech in India?
Has Financial Technology or FinTech finally come of age in India? While, FinTech accounted only for 13.3% of the total funding raised by Indian startups in 2015, the gross investment into it was up 8 times over the equivalent 2014 number of $145.1 million. While that looks amazing at first glance, it has to be noted that m-commerce platform One97 (Paytm) accounted for about 74% of the money raised by FinTech companies this year. Nonetheless, even if one were to exclude this number, Indian FinTech investment has doubled over the 2014 number. India’s FinTech sector has been a far cry from its global peers, accounting only for 6% of the total global FinTech space (by funding), but clearly as the numbers above show, that is changing fairly rapidly.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Mobile Money and Other Kenyan Tech Trends to Watch Out for in 2016
If there is one tech lesson we (hopefully) learned in 2015 is that the average Kenyan knows what they want and will go the extra length to glean the most value at the best possible price. We saw consumers emerge big winners in 2015 at the height of mobile data wars, the digital migration tussle, mobile manufacturers introducing smarter, cheaper smart phones in the market and financial institutions customizing mobile services.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments
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Evolko Systems Targets Rural India With New Health Solutions
Sickness is a great equalizer -- it hits the poor and the rich uniformly. While most startups in the healthcare sector have been on a frenzy to tap the urban markets, a San Francisco-based firm has devised a method to successfully cater to the bottom of the pyramid at scale.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Improving Lives and Livelihoods With Better Healthcare in Chile
The Chilean company AccuHealth, a pioneer in virtual clinical hospitals, has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a patient-centric tele-monitoring service designed to improve the health and livelihoods of chronically ill patients with value-added medical care at an affordable cost. BCtA is a global initiative that encourages companies to fight poverty through inclusive business models. It is supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international organizations.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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Youth Jobs 2.0
Youth unemployment is a complex issue with no easy fix; the global economy needs to create almost 2.5 million jobs each month to absorb the youth entering the market in the next decade. But digital technoloy offers some solutions if certain concrete steps are taken – and if there's collaboration between public and private sectors.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
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Financial Inclusion Trends and Innovators Already Lighting Up 2015
What will 2015 hold for financial inclusion innovations? Accion Venture Lab highlights some current groundbreaking trends, and several seed stage companies leading the charge.
- Categories
- Technology