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Afghanistan’s Vast Mineral Deposits Could Lift it Out of Poverty
For all the column inches and hours of negotiations spent discussing Afghanistan ’s recent past, present and future, one of the most pressing parts of the puzzle remains largely overlooked and poorly understood. The country sits on top of vast mineral deposits, which, if properly managed, offer the best chance of lifting a generation out of poverty and weaning the country off internati...
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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Peru Has Best Environment for Microfinance in Global Ranking
Lima, Oct. 11 (ANDINA). Peru has finished atop the Global Microscope on the Microfinance Business Environment 2011 for a third straight year, buoyed by an excellent legal framework, sophisticated regulators and a government commitment to use microfinance to expand financial access to the poor. This annual study, prepared by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), ranks the business environment for microfinance in 55 countries and provides a perspective on both country-sp...
- Region
- Latin America
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California Creates New Corporation Types That Reward Doing Good (FAQ)
Even as Wall Street is being occupied and corporations are reviled, there is a revolution quietly raging across the country that empowers corporations to be a strong force for good. This week, California joined that revolution when Governor Jerry Brown created two new classes of corporations for businesses that seek to pursue both profit and purpose: Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations . These new legal structures are revolutionary in ...
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Millennium Villages Project: does the ’big bang’ approach work?
By Madeleine Bunting Jeffrey Sachs is Marmite. Some love him, while others grumble about his high-handedness. But what no one can deny is his extraordinary energy and drive and how he makes things happen. He announced this week at the UN a second and final stage of the Millennium Villages...
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World Can Have Power, Cleaner Stoves for $48 Billion Annually, IEA Says
The world’s entire population can have electricity and cleaner stoves by 2030 if $48 billion is invested each year, the International Energy Agency said in its first estimate of the cost to end energy poverty. The sum is about the same as the combined annual capital spend of Europe ’s two biggest oil companies, ...
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- clean cooking
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Focus on Social Objective, MFIs Told
Indian micro lenders, who were gripped by a crisis that began in October last year, are now under pressure from investors not to ramp up growth but to make sure they are sticking to their basic precept of serving the poor. Microfinance-focused private investors are increasingly making social performance assessment a must for the lenders. Microfinance institutions, or MFIs, provide small loans to poor borrowers. They lend at 24-36% on account of high operational costs, sourcing money fro...
- Region
- South Asia
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’India is to be a beachhead market for us’: Danone
Groupe Danone has kickstarted its bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP), or mass market, business by launching a milk-based fortified dessert called Fundooz in India. The 17-billion French dairy giant has set up a country business unit for this venture. The division will innovate "at various levels for the BoP population"...
- Region
- South Asia
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$25M Fund Set Up to Finance ?Small Cap? Agribusiness in East Africa
A new fund has been set up by a group of impact investors and a US government agency to drive growth in East Africa’s troubled agricultural sector. Already, $25 million has been invested into the African Agricultural Capital Fund (AACF) by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and impact investors, who include Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Pearl Capital Partners, a Kampala-based specialised A...
- Region
- South Asia