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Is Jim Kim Destroying the World Bank — or Saving it From Itself?
In a shantytown perched in the hilly outskirts of Lima, Peru, people were dying. It was 1994, and thousands of squatters — many of them rural migrants who had fled from their country’s Maoist guerrilla insurgency — were crammed into unventilated hovels, living without basic sanitation. They faced outbreaks of cholera and other infectious diseases, but a government austerity program, which had slashed subsidized health care, forced many residents to forgo medical treatment they couldn’t afford. When food ran short, they formed ad hoc collectives to stave off starvation.
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Digital Government: 4 Keys to Kenya’s Success with Electronic Government Payments
Kenya has long been grappling with inefficiencies in government service delivery, characterized by resource constraints, bureaucratic processes and lack of accountability. In response, the government launched an integrated service model for person-to-government and business-to-government payments, allowing digital payments via online and mobile tools. Here are four reasons Kenya is ideally suited to digitize its government functions.
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In Response to Fraud, Bank of Ghana Puts Hold on Issuing New Microfinance Licenses
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has put on hold the issuing of new licences to microfinance companies.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- microfinance
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Airtime to the Rescue: Why India Should Mobilize Telcos for Disaster Relief
Last April, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, telcos offered free mobile airtime for 48 hours to their customers based in India, so they could connect with their family members and friends in Nepal. This example illustrates the potential of utilizing the payments infrastructure to respond to natural disasters. I believe this potential could be more fully realized by channeling relief and rehabilitation funds to disaster victims using airtime as currency – and India is the ideal proving ground for the concept.
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Grameen Foundation and ideas42 Launch Partnership to Expand Financial Inclusion in the Philippines
Grameen Foundation and ideas42 yesterday launched a new partnership to support financial inclusion in the Philippines using principles from behavioral science and innovations in digital financial services using mobile phones. The initiative, funded by JPMorgan Chase Foundation, aims to reach thousands of people identified in the low-income bracket throughout the country.
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- Asia Pacific
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Trending: Blending, The Fad for Mixing Public, Charitable and Private Money
MEETING the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals will require additional investments of $2.5 trillion a year in things like health care and education for the world’s poorest people, according to UNCTAD, a UN agency. A further $13.5 trillion is needed by 2030 to implement the Paris climate accord, according to the International Energy Agency, a watchdog group. It is enough to drive development types to drink—which may be how they came up with the term “blended finance”, a heady cocktail of public, private and charitable money.
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- South Asia
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Pro-Women, Anti-Cash: How Cashless Economies Can Boost Women’s Empowerment
We are still a long way from a world where cash is obsolete – in fact, 85 percent of consumer transactions are still conducted in cash, and for many people, hard currency clearly remains a useful commodity. But the landscape is changing rapidly, and for the world’s poorest and most excluded communities – and for women in particular – the drive towards cashless economies offers an exciting window of opportunity.
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A Costly Setback for SKS Microfinance?
Just as it seemed SKS Microfinance was getting back on its feet, it has received a body blow once again. It had applied for a small finance bank (SFB) licence, but while eight of the 10 entities the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) awarded these licences to were microfinance institutions (MFIs), SKS Microfinance was not one of them (See Left Out). Indeed, of the 10 leading MFIs in the country, one, Bandhan, has become a full-fledged bank, while another eight will shortly be converted into SFBs. SKS Microfinance is the only one left out.
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- South Asia
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- microfinance