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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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Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority Launches Micro-insurance
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) hopes a newly launched blueprint will support the marketing and implementation of micro-insurance products across Indonesia by 2016.According to OJK commissioner overseeing non-banking financial industry Firdaus Djaelani, it is expected that the blueprint will help expand the micro-insurance segment in the domestic market.
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Rwanda: ‘Ensuring Universal Access to Financial Services Key Priority’
Increasing access to financial services is one of the Government's priorities as Rwanda looks to ensure a self-reliant populace, John Rwangombwa, the central bank governor, has said."Rwanda's vision is to ensure financial inclusion, especially for the rural masses. In fact, we have made significant progress towards this target. So far, we have been able to double formal financial inclusion from 21 per cent of adults in 2008 to 42 per cent as at the end of last year," Rwangombwa noted.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Nigeria’s Bank of Industry Seeks to Empower Women with Financial Inclusion Strategy
For Nigeria to realise its economic goals, a paradigm shift in the nation’s financial inclusion strategy may have become imperative.This was the view of the Managing Director, Bank of Industry (BoI), Ms. Evelyn Oputu during at the microfinance conference organized by LAPO Microfinance Bank Limited in Lagos, yesterday.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Bitcoin Is A Remarkable Innovation, Here’s Why It Will Fail
Bitcoin has succeeded where many other virtual currencies have failed because it was designed to be as similar to cash as possible while still being digital.
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- remittances
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