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New Commission Aims to Further Business Engagement on SDGs
Can another group aimed at demonstrating the role of business in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals actually make a difference?
- Categories
- Environment
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U.S. Launches ‘Full-court Press’ for a Zika Vaccine
The United States is pushing to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus, a top health official said Thursday, as doctors warn that the mosquito-borne disease, which causes birth defects in infants and is typically found abroad, has become a growing threat in the U.S.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
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Mobile Money Set to Disrupt International Remittances Market
Amdocs (Nasdaq:DOX), the leading provider of customer experience solutions, today released the results of a new survey examining consumer attitudes towards different ways of transferring money internationally. With the World Bank citing that the international remittance market is expected to reach $610 billion1 this year it represents an attractive, fast-emerging revenue stream for mobile financial services providers.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech, remittances
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Regulation Should Preserve Benefits of Digital Currency
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a staff paper that examines the risks and use cases of virtual currencies such as bitcoin, recommending a balanced regulatory framework that will not stifle innovation.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- regulations
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East African Company Moving From Selling Only Solar Energy to ‘Everything’
For the last four years Kenya-based consumer finance company M-KOPA has enabled 300,000 low-income earners in East Africa to acquire home solar energy systems using its pay-as-you-go model.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- renewable energy, solar
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ADB Expends Leasing Company Loan to Boost China’s Health System
Despite a reform programme and efforts to scale up healthcare funding in China, the ADB said shortfalls remain in access to finance in some underdeveloped regions. Lease finance, whereby a leasing company buys an asset on behalf of the user and rents it to them for an agreed period, offers an attractive option for hospitals needing high-value equipment, it said.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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Inside Facebook’s Ambitious Plan to Connect the Whole World
The stern woman behind the press desk at the United Nations is certain I’ve made a mistake about the person I’m here to see. “Mr. Mark Zuckerberg?” she says. “Who’s he?” He’s an Internet executive, I tell her. He started Facebook. It’s the second week of the United Nations’ General Assembly. Several hundred reporters crowd into the press holding area. Nearby, on the main plaza, heads of state stroll by. In this place, it seems, Mark Zuckerberg might as well be Mark Smith. She checks her dog-eared schedule, then makes a call, enunciating into the receiver: “ZOO-ker-burg. Mark ZOO-ker-burg.” Silence. “Yes, the Facebook guy.” More silence, during which it occurs to me the UN is like the opposite of Facebook. If it had motivational posters on the wall, they’d read: Move slow and break nothing. Finally, she hangs up and turns back to me. Zuckerberg is on the program after all, she concedes, speaking just before German chancellor Angela Merkel.
- Categories
- Technology
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Mobile Money Fraud Hits Rural Kenya Residents Hard
Mobile money has made lives easier for most people in Africa, but this has not come cheap for the users with con tricksters forever devising means and ways of stealing the money. In Kenya, for example, con men are applying tricks that are more advanced than service providers and users.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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