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NexThought Monday – The (Financial) Wisdom of the Crowd: How a group of non-experts outperformed traditional credit ratings at identifying good and bad borrowers
Determining risk has always been a hurdle for lenders, and a barrier for small businesses looking to expand. Non-traditional credit scoring could help - but is it dependable? A new Harvard study on a crowdsourced credit scoring approach found it predicted defaults with 45 percent greater accuracy than standard credit scores.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- credit scoring, lending
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Phone Camera Checks Water for Arsenic
UK scientists have developed a mobile phone-based system to help people avoid drinking water contaminated with arsenic.1 The phone’s camera measures quantum dot fluorescence in response to arsenic, achieving a limit of detection as low as 5µM.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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A $20 Gadget that Can Save 70,000 Mothers a Year
The lives of tens of thousands of new mothers around the world could be saved by a simple, hand-held, British-made device costing only £12, which runs on a mobile-phone charger and is set to be introduced in hospitals across Africa, India and Pakistan.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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Following the (Mobile) Money: Services now available in 61 percent of developing markets, GSMA reports
The mobile financial services sector continued to expand in 2014, boosted by the creation of more enabling regulatory frameworks in several markets, according to the GSMA’s 2014 State of the Industry Report on mobile financial services. With 255 mobile money services in operation across 89 countries, mobile money services are now available in over 60 percent of developing markets.
- Categories
- Technology
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NexThought Monday – Test Tubers: Why potatoes in Bangladesh are turning heads in the Andes
If you’re a subsistence farmer of potatoes, cassava or bananas, you’ll often sow your crops by taking cuttings from other plants. An alternative method of in vitro micro-propagation involves cloning plantlets in a laboratory setting. This can lead to dramatic gains in crop yields, but it’s expensive. But there may be a low-tech solution.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Technology
- Tags
- research
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Orange fires off sub-$40 Firefox phone for Africa
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Orange launched a digital offer called Klif for under US$40, bundling a smartphone, data, voice and text bundle. The solution will be available across Africa and the Middle East.Orange has launched Klif for under US$40, bundling a smartphone, data, voice and text in one for its African and Middle Eastern footprint. Ten offer is claimed to set "a new benchmark in price that will act as a major catalyst for smartphone and data adoption across the region".
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Visa and Bharti Airtel Push Mobile Money as Telcos Lead the Way in Developing Markets
Visa is to work with Bharti Airtel to extend its mobile money service to seven markets in Africa, including Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Seychelles and Tanzania.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How an Anti-Tech Teacher Ended Up Creating A Mobile App to Improve Education in Africa
In 2011 I returned to Kenya for a vacation. I wanted to see the community where I had lived just two years earlier, bring gifts to the families I had bonded with, and sing songs with the kids of the rural village that I had called home. I had lived in Muhuru Bay without water and electricity while working with teachers in this community to help students prepare for high school. It was meant to be a break before heading off to the West Coast for business school. I hadn't expected to start a company, especially one in technology.
- Categories
- Education, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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