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Kopo Kopo Changes Focus From Payments to Micro-Lending, Announces New CEO
After raising $2.10 million in equity financing, Kenyan payments platform Kopo Kopo is pivoting its business away from the Lipa Na M-Pesa service it offers in partnership with Safaricom to focus on micro-loans to businesses. To this effect, the company has appointed a new CEO to direct the company’s growth and shift in focus.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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India Looks to Improve African Health
At the recent India-Africa summit in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met 54 African heads of state to discuss ways of deepening relationships, including working together to improve public health.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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Putting the Good in Greed
Last April, two months after being named the first global head for impact investing at BlackRock, Deborah Winshel flew to San Francisco to meet with Ryan LaFond, a hedge fund manager at the firm. LaFond and a team of researchers had spent two years studying whether algorithms used to predict fluctuations in the stock market could also spot a company whose business is doing good. Identifying responsible corporate citizens was part of the reason Winshel left her job as president of the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation; she believes Wall Street has a role to play in fixing some of the world’s most urgent problems.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Taboo-Breaking African TV Show Confronting Unsafe Sex and HIV
Emmanuel Ikubese knew the TV drama in which he starred was having an impact the day a stranger walked up to him and thanked him for saving her life.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Billionaires Launch a Massive Clean Energy Fund, but Can the World Wait for Its Breakthroughs?
Here's some terrific news for early-stage energy entrepreneurs everywhere: a powerful group of investors wants to invest in your ideas.
- Categories
- Energy
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ANALYSIS: Bitcoin vs. M-Pesa: Digital payments innovators battle in Kenya
On 14 December, a high court in Kenya will come to a preliminary decision in a battle between Bitcoin remittance and payments company BitPesa, which is suing Safaricom, the telecom company which operates M-Pesa. Also suing is Lipisha, the payment company that gateways BitPesa and M-Pesa. There's plenty of irony to go round here. Bitcoin and M-Pesa should not be pitted against one another - both are elements of a payments revolution that is happening right now and which will be remembered as one of the great technology success stories of the 21st century.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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OPINION: The Impact Investing Illusion
For many who have been working in the social enterprise space for a long time, nothing has been quite so startling as the recent lightning fast acceleration of the so-called "impact" investing movement. In the U.S., much of the traction for the movement has been supplied by the rise of new "hybrid" legal forms such as the Benefit Corporation and the L3C, and the spread of the B Corp brand.
Some view these developments as the long-awaited key to scaling solutions to the world's most intractable problems. I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I'm worried as hell. Let me tell you why.- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Pope Francis Fears Mosquitoes More Than Terrorists in Africa
Pope Francis is on a six-day tour of Africa, which Western media rushed to dub the riskiest of his papacy so far.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- climate change
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