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Online Matchmaker Fights Poverty by Funding Businesses
A Danish entrepreneur is trying to end poverty in Africa through microcredit -- funding African businesses by connecting them with investors from around the world. Tim Vang is the co-founder of MYC4, a web-based marketplace that lets investors bid to provide loans to small and medium-sized African businesses. Bidders compete in an online auction, with those offering money at the lowest interest rates financing the loan. Typically, around 50 investors will part fund a single loan. ...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Booting Up Tanzania With Help From Google
When Joshua Stern, a graduate of Stanford with a degree in computer science, served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania from 2006 to 2007, one thing soon became clear. "The major takeaway there," he tells Fast Company , "was that the best development work being done was being done by these local groups, community-based organizations." The small groups were often the most effective--yet they had no web presence, no effective way to communicate with other small NGOs or to raise f...
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Will Mobile Money Kill banking?
Central Banks will Demand Authority over Mobile Companies Conversations at receptions, luncheons and in the hallway at the World Economic Forum in Davos can be fascinating. Over lunch I sat with former stock exchange executive who is working to set up back end payment system for money transfers by mobile. In developing nations where banking infrastructure is poor or non-existent, the growth of mobile payment transfer systems has been explosive. M-PE...
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Microcredit in Bangladesh ’Helped 10 Million’
Microcredit lifted 10 million Bangladeshis out of poverty between 1990 and 2008, according to a report. The work of Grameen Bank and others helped many families to raise their income above $1.25 a day, said the US-based Microcredit Summit Campaign . The study follows recent criticism of microfinance, which works by providing small loans to people to invest in ge...
- Region
- South Asia
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Former Lehman Banker Leads Social Ventures in China, Battles Dyslexia in Schools
China’s social entrepreneurship scene is not all that well known , but the Hong Kong-based Avantage Ventures is trying to change that by infusing the country with a hefty dose of capital and mentorship. The company is led by founder Yvonne Li, a former investment banker with Lehman Brothers, who has a particular zest ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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(From Davos) China’s Economic Micromanaging Unsustainable
(Reuters) - Belgium’s economy minister said on Wednesday that heavy state involvement in emerging market economies is unsustainable, and it urged China to open sectors up to foreign companies. Vincent van Quickenborne, Belgian minister of economy and reform, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos that China gives hefty state subsidies to co...
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Local ?Bridge-Maker? Turns Up at Davos
Shawn Ahmed is tweeting gleefully about the white all-access badge he’s been handed at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where politicians and CEOs are meeting this week to try to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. The 29-year-old Canadian landed a coveted seat representing the YouTube community after winning an international online competition called the Davos Debates. It’s a coup for a guy from Richmond Hill who ditched a graduat...
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
- Tags
- impact investing
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