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Social Business Roundup: The Problem with Sachets, the Beauty of Rats and the Dark Side of Cross-Selling
Everyone seems to love the products in individually-sized sachets being sold at the BoP ... except for Mother Nature. Ethiopia's only too happy to roll out the welcome mat for some rats with amazing TB-sniffing skills. A questionable cross-selling strategy in South Africa harms a vulnerable population and raises uncomfortable questions about financial inclusion. It's all part of our weekly Social Business Roundup.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Engineering Social Impact: Being a Hardware Entrepreneur is Hard … But Worth It
There's nothing fast or easy about hardware innovation. Hardware is, well, hard. But a growing number of stakeholders in the development space see the importance of hardware-led social ventures and the impact they make in emerging markets, and they'll be especially interested in ASME's upcoming Innovation Showcase, a competition with events in in India, Kenya and the United States.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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Starbucks Debuts Mobile App In India
To many, it was a disturbing notion: why was Starbucks taking so long to bring its wildly successful mobile app to its fastest-growing market, India? Almost every day that went by made people only wonder more just what was going on. New word says that it’s finally landing, though, and bringing with it many of the same features that made the original great.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Samsung Pay beats Apple and Google to launch mobile payments service in India
Samsung has launched its mobile payments service in India.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Ecobank plans to use its app to make traditional bank accounts relevant in Africa
For the past 15 years, the growth of mobile phones in Africa has helped fill the void poor banking infrastructure has created – with the technology being used to address the needs of the unbanked.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenya is launching the world’s first mobile-only government bond
Kenyan citizens will soon be able to buy government bonds on their cell phones. Kenya’s Treasury said today that the M-Akiba bond, the world’s first mobile-only government bond, would go on sale on Thursday after a delay of almost two years.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Nuru AI chatbot helps to solve day-to-day problems in Africa
In the Western world, everyone is talking about messaging apps and chatbots. Now, users in Africa and other low-income countries can use chatbots instead of text messages to ask questions.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Google.org grants $50 million to nonprofits striving for equal access in education
According to a report from Google.org, the search giant’s philanthropic arm, 74 percent of students globally have little or no internet connectivity, 221 million students in schools are being taught in a language that is foreign to them and 32 million primary school-aged children can’t even reach traditional classrooms because of violent conflict and displacement.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- philanthropy
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