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Microfinance Apex Bank Proposed in Ghana
Speedy establishment of a Microfinance Apex Bank has been proposed to bolster the microfinance sector, critical for poverty reduction through financial empowerment of low-income people.
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Day 1 at the BoP Summit: Why BoP business practices need to move to 2.0
At the end of day one of the “BoP Summit 2013: Creating an Action Agenda for the Next Decade,” WDI Senior Research Fellow and conference organizer Ted London had a question for the participants: What will our legacy be?
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Inclusion — don’t count on banks
We need thousands of small private sector financial intermediaries for promoting financial inclusion.
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- South Asia
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Tanzania: Mobile Money Takes Firm Grip On Tanzanians
Mobile money has taken off in Tanzania over the last few years and about a quarter of the population is now using mobile money services.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa: The Next Great Growth Story for Visa and MasterCard?
Africa's role in the global economy is visibly changing. It is no longer the world's tip jar, but rather a formidable growth pillar.Kenyan telecom company Safaricom, for instance, is the world leader in mobile payments. More than 17 million of Kenya's 40 million citizens use Safaricom's mobile payment service, M-PESA. In addition, close to 25% of Kenya's Gross National Product flows through the service.
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- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The High Cost, for the Poor, of Using a Bank
There have been a lot of reports lately on the growing numbers of people without bank accounts, and on those who have accounts but continue to use alternative financial services such as payday loans. All this has convinced policy makers and many consumer advocates that low- and moderate-income people are victims of “financial exclusion.” They have therefore concentrated on moving these people to banks.The numbers of “unbanked” and “underbanked” people are indeed growing. Seventeen million people nationwide are unbanked, up from ten million in 2002; forty-three million are underbanked.
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Weekly Roundup – 10/19/13: Will the FI2020 movement do for financial exclusion what the MDGs have done for poverty and disease?
Since 2000, the Millennium Development Goals have focused the world’s attention on alleviating poverty, hunger and disease, mobilizing massive human and financial capital and bringing undeniable results. The takeaway: solving big problems requires a sense of purpose, specific goals – and a clear timeframe. In a few weeks, the FI2020 movement will put that formula to the test to solve the global problem of financial exclusion.
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Social entrepreneurship: More complex than ‘start a business, save the world’
Gauging the impact of a social entrepreneurship is not a hard science, but there are clear signs of when such an effort is on the right track.The highest level of impact can be based on whether the entrepreneur changed a system, said Simon Stumpf, regional representative of Ashoka East Africa. A small operation in organic fertilizer or microhydro might not look as efficient as it could be, but an entrepreneur may have worked to get power purchase agreements so others can sell power to grid, for example.
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