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MasterCard Foundation Investing $47M in Agricultural Finance Projects Across Africa
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has commended the MasterCard Foundation's pronouncement of investing $47 million in agricultural finance projects across Africa, including $15 million for a partnership with AGRA that will deliver financial support to 730,000 farming households.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- impact investing
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MIT-USAID Program Releases Evaluation of Water Filters
The United Nations now estimates that 90 percent of the world’s population has access to improved drinking water. But the story of access to safe drinking water is more complex, especially when it comes to the 2.7 billion people who live on less than $2 a day: In developing countries around the world, tens of millions of people rely on water filtration and purification products each year to improve their drinking water in the absence of proper infrastructure providing clean water.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
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IDB Loans $10M to Paraguay’s Vision Banco to Fund Water, Sanitation Facilities for Low-Income Populations
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a US-based multilateral finance institution that operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, recently approved a loan of USD 10 million to Vision Banco, a microfinance institution (MFI) in Paraguay. The loan will be disbursed from IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority Sector facility, which lends, invests equity, offers technical advice and provides partial guarantees and risk-sharing facilities to “companies, financial intermediaries … [and] non-profits that are willing to engage with the base of the socioeconomic pyramid”[4].
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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Partners in Food Solutions Announces New Corporate Partner, Expanded Impact in Africa
An international public-private partnership is expanding its efforts to strengthen Africa’s food system. The Hershey Company is joining Partners in Food Solutions, a Minnesota nonprofit, as its newest corporate partner.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- nutrition
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Pacific-Rim Nations Led by U.S. Agree to Historic Trade Deal
A dozen Pacific-rim nations agreed to an historic pact that would cut trade barriers on items ranging from cars to rice, setting up a potentially contentious ratification vote before a skeptical U.S. Congress.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- public policy
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Grameen Foundation Selected as a Global Resilience Challenge Winner
Grameen Foundation was selected by The Global Resilience Partnership to implement transformative resilience solutions to problems facing smallholder coconut and cocoa farmers in Southeast Asia. A global leader in innovations to help the world's poor, Grameen Foundation was among eight global teams in the Global Resilience Challenge, a multi-stage design competition that received nearly 500 initial applications to address the most difficult resilience challenges. The foundation will now receive up to $1 million to implement its proposed solution in a way that can be scaled and adopted by others in the future.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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This Nigerian Architect Wants to Turn Africa’s Water Slums into Floating Cities
Nigerian architect Kunlè Adeyemi is re-imagining African’s water slums as floating islands.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Small Farmers and Business Get Reason to Cheer as Reserve Bank of India Grants Licenses to 10 Small Banks
The Reserve Bank granted small bank licences to 10 applicants, most of which are engaged in microfinance, in a move seen as one of the most far-reaching initiatives on financial inclusion since bank nationalisation in the late 1960s.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- lending, microfinance