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How open data can help the Global South, from disaster relief to voter turnout
In Africa, Latin America, Asia and beyond, hopes are high that access to data can help developing economies by increasing transparency, fostering sustainable development, building climate resiliency and the like.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- data, global development
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Going Cashless? Bad for Tax Cheats, Privacy, Poor
Could physical cash go away entirely? Economists see great payoffs in a cashless society: lower transaction costs, new tools to manage economic growth and an end to tax evasion and money laundering. Critics see an end to privacy, frightening new powers for tyrants and costs that would fall disproportionately on the poor.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech
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Opinion: How technology is helping India move toward smart service delivery
In 2015, India launched eVIN, or electronic vaccine intelligence network — a smart, easy-to-use technology aimed at digitizing vaccine stocks in the country. It’s no small ask in a nation with the largest and most ambitious immunization program in the world — aiming to immunize some 156 million women and children each year.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Addressing Eye Care in Emerging Markets with Blended Finance
WHO estimates that 39 million people suffer from blindness, more than half of them due to cataracts, and more than 90 percent of blind people live in the developing world. Cataracts are often curable but the traditional surgery is expensive. Convergence is supporting GlobalVision's plan to build on the affordable eye model that Aravind pioneered in India and establish a network of 60 eye care hospitals in emerging markets over the next 10 years, borrowing techniques from the microfinance sector.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Huawei Agrees to Deal to Help African Expats Send Money Home
The deal will let Huawei and WorldRemit tap into growing demand for money transfers from Africans living abroad using mobile-payments services, which are popular in places where banks are scarce or unreliable.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- remittances
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This phone solves one of tech’s biggest frustrations by removing the need for a battery
In an attempt to deliver a long-term solution, researchers at the University of Washington are exploring what happens if we remove batteries from smartphones altogether.
- Categories
- Technology
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No more empty stocks: Contraceptives reach rural women thanks to pioneering logistics system
“It is free - no need to pay. Better still, I am also told that from now on I can get it regularly in my home when the mobile health team visits my village. We can now start family planning. It is very good for us”, says Nan Aye Aye Lwin.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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A new wave of tech talent is emerging, not from India’s classrooms but its hinterlands
Despite finishing school and college, Mandal couldn’t find stable employment in his village in West Midnapur district of India’s West Bengal state.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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