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M-Pesa Shows Why Mobile Money Is Yet to Realize Its True Potential in Africa
Last November, “60 Minutes”, the flagship news magazine show on US television network CBS, ran a whole segment on M-Pesa, the mobile money service which was started in Kenya nine years ago by Safaricom, the country’s largest mobile phone company. It was a great moment for Kenyan innovation, being featured on prime time television for millions of Americans who were likely hearing about M-Pesa for the first time.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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RPT-Israel Launches First Social Impact Bond to Prevent Diabetes
Some 2,250 Israelis at risk of Type 2 diabetes will be helped to make lifestyle changes that could prevent the disease developing under a pioneering scheme to be financed by private investors.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Tech Entrepreneurs Boost Microfinance Startup Zidisha
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and a handful of other tech entrepreneurs and companies have donated a total of $525,000 to microfinance startup Zidisha, which hopes to bring down costs of peer-to-peer lending to cash-strapped young entrepreneurs in the developing world by getting rid of intermediaries.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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What Will Make Vaccines Work Better in Developing Countries?
For Mohommad Mustakim, the risk of diarrhea is everywhere. The 4-year-old and his family live in a crowded slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where open sewage and poor sanitation increase the spread of diarrhea-causing viruses and bacteria.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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18th Microcredit Summit Campaign Announces Declaration on Economic Empowerment and Social Inclusion
Organised jointly by Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, the Arab Gulf Programme for Development (AGFUND), and the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the summit gathered 1000 global policy makers, central bank managers and microfinance experts to explore and discuss innovative financial inclusion strategies that can create clear pathways to economic and social inclusion.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Pharmacy to the World Can’t Make Diapers, Hospital Beds
India is lagging in manufacturing medical devices and the recent increase in import duties on such devices are a ‘corrective step’ to create an ecosystem for manufacturing them locally, according to a top government official.
- Region
- South Asia
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What Motivates Companies to Do Good—Altruism, or Guilt?
Talk of doing society good is by now a standard component of American companies’ messaging. Whether they meet that stated goal is another matter, but still, the impetus for it all is still a bit mysterious: Why have multi-billion-dollar firms invested so heavily on corporate social responsibility, or CSR, programs in the last few decades? Are firms engaging in socially conscious behavior for honest reasons, or simply to direct attention away from some of their more harmful behaviors?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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How ‘Social’ Social Entrepreneurship Should Be?
Social entrepreneurship has been a much discussed topic recently. Despite the vagueness of the term, it is an appealing construct because of the promise it holds – of being an entrepreneur and helping the society along the way. But what becomes a great difficulty on this way is when one aspect is given more importance than the other; or completely forgotten.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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