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Mark Zuckerberg has made a surprise visit to Nairobi to learn about mobile money
On his surprise tour of tech hubs in Africa, Mark Zuckerberg has made a pit stop in Nairobi. Announcing his arrival on Facebook, he described talking with entrepreneurs working out of the tech space, the iHub, and dining on ugali and tilapia with Kenya’s cabinet secretary of information and communications.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech
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Today’s SpaceX explosion is a major setback for Facebook’s free internet ambitions
This morning, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on its launch pad, completely destroying the rocket and its payload two days before the scheduled launch. The cause of the explosion is still unknown, but anyone counting on this weekend’s launch to deliver equipment into orbit is now left scrambling for a replacement.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Interest Payment on Mobile Money Wallets to Begin on Sept. 11 in Ghana
Mobile telecom operators with mobile money service have clinched a deal with their partner banks for them to pay interest on customers’ balances in their wallets.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Three Keys to Scaling Technology in Africa
Based on the success of Mama Rescue, a cloud-based transport voucher and emergency dispatch system for mothers in rural Uganda, UNICEF and the Ugandan Ministry of Health decided that the platform should be scaled up to the entire country. Here are three key lessons they've learned for successfully scaling technology.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Bank of Ghana to Make Mobile Money Platforms Interoperable
The Bank of Ghana has initiated a project to implement a mobile money payment infrastructure that will enable the seamless transfer of funds from one network provider to another (interoperability).
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- cash transfers, fintech
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Mark Zuckerberg is on a surprise visit to Nigeria, Facebook’s largest African market
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is visiting Nigeria for a few days. Zuckerberg says he’ll be “meeting with developers and entrepreneurs, and learning about the startup ecosystem in Nigeria” during his time in Lagos. In line with this, Zuckerberg’s first notable stop was at Co-Creation Hub (Cc Hub), in Yaba, Lagos’ Silicon Valley-style ground zero for start-ups.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid: Exploring the “digital poverty stack” – Part 2
In the first post in this series, we proposed that donors and governments advance digital and financial inclusion by focusing more on creating public goods that enable the broader ecosystem, rather than on peripheral innovation in service delivery. In this second post, we discuss the implications of this shift and highlight some new efforts to move the fields in the right direction.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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The AgTech Pedestal Problem: How to Bring Innovation Down to Earth
Without the knowledge to operate it and systems to maintain it, technology is a liability rather than an asset to a farmer. It cannot work in isolation. We must be careful not to place AgTech on a pedestal; AgTech can only be successful if it is grounded in the realities of the developing world farmer. But we're already seeing several examples of that emerging from "Silicon Plateau."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- research
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