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Viewpoint: It’s Time to Green Our Financial Deserts
Since 2010, more than 5,000 bank branches have closed in communities across the United States. Meanwhile, expensive alternative financial service providers like check cashers and payday lenders continued to proliferate at an alarming rate. Not surprisingly, these two trends have disproportionately impacted hard-working people of color, trapping roughly 9 million African-American families in a world where it costs more to have less.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Airtel Ghana Launches Mobile Money Loan Scheme
Airtel has partnered with Fidelity Bank and Tiaxa, a global leader in Nano credits to launch Airtel Money Bosea – a Nano loan scheme that provides access to financial services enabling customers to borrow money instantly through their Airtel Money wallet anytime, anywhere.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech
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Zimbabwe’s Cash Shortage Hits Mobile Money Services
Mobile money transfer agencies in Bulawayo have in the past few days recorded low business due to the cash crisis that hit the country in recent weeks.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech
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TransferTo, Barri Partner to Provide Mobile Money Transfers in El Salvador
Barri Financial Group, a U.S.-based money transfer service provider, has signed a strategic partnership with TransferTo, a B2B mobile payment network, to enable real-time mobile money transfers to Tigo Money accounts in El Salvador.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- fintech, remittances
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In Brazil, a New Zika Strategy: Billboards That Smell Like Humans and Kill Mosquitoes
There’s an impressive array of creative billboards in Brazil. One in Rio de Janeiro sprays mists of water to cool down beachgoers waiting for a bus home. But a new innovation recently unveiled in this city is plain lethal — at least for bugs.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
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Africa Looks to Its Entrepreneurs
With a majority of African nations diversifying from traditional sources of income, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a key to economic growth. So far, entrepreneurship has yielded huge returns for entrepreneurs, and according to experts, there lies great untapped potential to drive the African continent into its next phase of development.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Connectivity for the Bottom Billion: A Call for Collective Action
In the developed world, we take the universal availability of the Internet largely for granted. That connectivity in turn creates tremendous opportunities and benefits for individuals and businesses alike. What we often forget is that less than half of the world’s population has access to the Internet. Most of the 4 billion people who live in an unconnected world live in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. The problem is particularly acute for the billion people with the lowest incomes, who tend to live in rural areas of developing countries where there is little or no infrastructure to provide connectivity. This lack of access to connectivity leaves billions cut off from the Internet and thus the ability to use it to improve their lives and economic situations.
- Categories
- Technology
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Google to Ban Payday Loan Advertisements
Google announced Wednesday that it will ban all payday loan ads from its site, bowing to concerns by advocates who say the lending practice exploits the poor and vulnerable by offering them immediate cash that must be paid back under sky-high interest rates.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- lending
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