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Africa’s Microinsurance Maze: Early trial-and-error efforts could lead to coverage for 1 billion in 2013
Insurers, mobile-phone companies and behind-the-scenes administrators also involved have learned that mobile networks and microinsurance are potentially a great fit. The challenge for the future is getting people to pay.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Socially Contagious: How Microclinic International is Spreading Healthy Behaviors
Whether you’re buying shoes or making health-related decisions, your behavior is influenced by those around you. That’s the premise behind Microclinic International, which uses social networks to make good health contagious.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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A Growing Lifeline: Mobile Technologies in Agricultural Development
For farmers, mobile devices can deliver services that help them improve their production, such as weather information and technical advice. For buyers, data delivered via mobile can increase their insight into volumes harvested and processed by farmers and their organizations during the cycle.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology, Telecommunications
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The PeaceTXT Proposition: Stopping violence with an SMS
PeaceTXT: a global mash-up of social innovators, software designers and information technologists (to name a few) collaborating on mobile technology’s potential to prevent violence. The collaboration, spearheaded by PopTech, is aiming to create the first broadly available tested methodologies and technical platforms for using mobile phones to disrupt violence and engender more peaceful communities.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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Good Cloud, Bad Cloud: Multinational ICT vendors are pushing services in Africa, why the solutions are in Africans’ hands
While global multinational companies are pushing private cloud computing services, the only viable solution for most enterprises in Africa, then, is the public cloud. The hope for Africa lies in the rapidly decreasing cost of broadband Internet and smaller, homegrown cloud service providers (CSPs) that are willing to invest in cloud data centers in Africa.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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How a Mobile Airtime Vendor Became Zimbabwe’s Fastest-Growing Bank: EcoCash has reached a million subscribers in less than 6 months
Money is whizzing through the airwaves and cell towers of Zimbabwe, as a mobile cash transfer system is on track to become the country’s biggest bank. EcoCash, a mobile money transfer service operated by telecommunications company EcoNet Wireless Zimbabwe, has reached a million subscribers in under six months since its launch.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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iHub: Experiencing the Energy at Nairobi’s Innovative ICT Hotspot
iHub currently connects to more than 8,500 members through a weekly newsletter and events that include Start-up Pitch Night, Fireside Chats, and Hack-a-Thons. A tiered membership scheme gives select members daily access to the facility, including the 20MB Internet connection and space for meetings, Internet use, networking, and collaborative projects.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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How the Arab World Can Build a Tech Sector of its Own
Unemployment in MENA is 10.3 percent, according to the International Labor Organization, the highest anywhere in the world. That rate grows to 23.8 percent for those between the ages of 15 and 25. But where should youth turn to look for meaningful jobs? Maybe the same place they turned to stage protests against their governments: online.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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