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Alibaba issues China’s first microloan securitization
Orient Securities and Alibaba have issued the nation’s first securitized product backed by microloans.
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- Asia Pacific
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- microfinance
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Microfinance Apex Bank Proposed in Ghana
Speedy establishment of a Microfinance Apex Bank has been proposed to bolster the microfinance sector, critical for poverty reduction through financial empowerment of low-income people.
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Inclusion — don’t count on banks
We need thousands of small private sector financial intermediaries for promoting financial inclusion.
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- Uncategorized
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- South Asia
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Tanzania: Mobile Money Takes Firm Grip On Tanzanians
Mobile money has taken off in Tanzania over the last few years and about a quarter of the population is now using mobile money services.
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- Uncategorized
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Social Entrepreneur’s Inspiration For Solar-Powered Lighting
Solar-powered light bulbs for the poor: A growing number of social enterprises are selling such technology to bottom of the pyramid households in Africa, India and other countries. One of the first to do so, Denver-based Nokero (for No Kerosene) just introduced its next generation of products, as it works to make the company’s management more professional–and able to grow the enterprise even more.A little more background on the issue: Around 1.3 billion of world’s population lacks access to reliable electricity. Most of them use kerosene lamps, which are very very very expensive compared to incandescent lamps, (people spend as much as 30% of their income on kerosene-based fuels, according to Nokero), cause deadly fires (If you live without electricity, you’re seven times more likely to die by fire than someone with electricity, according to Katsaros), and contribute to air pollution. They don’t produce a whole heck of a lot of light, either
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- Energy
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The High Cost, for the Poor, of Using a Bank
There have been a lot of reports lately on the growing numbers of people without bank accounts, and on those who have accounts but continue to use alternative financial services such as payday loans. All this has convinced policy makers and many consumer advocates that low- and moderate-income people are victims of “financial exclusion.” They have therefore concentrated on moving these people to banks.The numbers of “unbanked” and “underbanked” people are indeed growing. Seventeen million people nationwide are unbanked, up from ten million in 2002; forty-three million are underbanked.
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Africa: The Next Great Growth Story for Visa and MasterCard?
Africa's role in the global economy is visibly changing. It is no longer the world's tip jar, but rather a formidable growth pillar.Kenyan telecom company Safaricom, for instance, is the world leader in mobile payments. More than 17 million of Kenya's 40 million citizens use Safaricom's mobile payment service, M-PESA. In addition, close to 25% of Kenya's Gross National Product flows through the service.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority Launches Micro-insurance
The Financial Services Authority (OJK) hopes a newly launched blueprint will support the marketing and implementation of micro-insurance products across Indonesia by 2016.According to OJK commissioner overseeing non-banking financial industry Firdaus Djaelani, it is expected that the blueprint will help expand the micro-insurance segment in the domestic market.
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