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New Income Tax in Rwanda Causing Major Financial Strain for Many Mobile Money Agents
More than 7 million Rwandans do their banking through their cellphones, but many of the agents who facilitate the banking transactions never declared their income to the country’s tax authority. Now the tax authority has started taking a 15-percent withholding tax from these agents’ incomes with the cellphone provider, plunging some of these agents into financial turmoil.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Big Tax Break for Socially Responsible Investing
Opportunity zones, pushed last year with bipartisan support, were created for a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. They hark back to plans from the 1980s meant to steer capital into blighted neighborhoods.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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South Africa to start building affordable smartphones
Developed by Rwandan businessman and billionaire Ashish Thakkar, the Mara group at the Africa Investment Forum announced ambitious plans to develop manufacturing plants in Rwanda and in South Africa.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Alipay to acquire 45% shares of Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank
Alipay is a part of the internet giant Alibaba, which is Chinese retail, internet, technology, and AI company. On the other hand, Telenor Microfinance bank is Pakistan’s first scheduled microfinance bank that provides small loans to people who aim to set up their own business to come out of poverty.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- microfinance
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa’s dominant mobile money service is going global
M-Pesa’s over 23 million active subscribers in Kenya will also be able to send and receive money through their phones and be connected to WU’s 500,000 global agents.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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This non-profit turns to wealthy, young crypto donors in order to fund social projects
A non-profit called the Social Alpha Foundation is crusading to use cryptocurrency donations as grants. The grants will be awarded to entities dedicated to projects related involving social impact and blockchain education.
- Categories
- Technology
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Press release: Fintech activity in Latin America spreads to 18 countries
The report provides data which, while illustrating the challenges that the industry faces, also reflects an inevitable transformation of the financial sector and the role that entrepreneurs play in accelerating innovation and changing the way in which people have interacted until now with financial services.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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