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Viewpoint: Responsible Investing: PE impact investors should target SMEs in Southeast Asia
There is a concentration of investments in a few sectors such as financial services and energy. Agriculture and micro-SMEs are two areas with high potential in the region.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- microfinance
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Kiva’s Crowdfunding Platform Transforms Into Hub for Impact Investing and Financial Inclusion
“One of the things that goes unnoticed about Kiva is our quiet but continued pursuit of the impact being achieved,” says Premal Shah, who until 2018 was president and the only remaining cofounder still with Kiva. “This is hard to do and hard to measure. But it is critical.”
- Categories
- Finance
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Jumia Is Battling With Internal Fraud and External Legal Threats Even as Its Losses Widen
The company has disclosed it recently uncovered instances of improper orders placed and subsequently cancelled on its marketplace platform wrongly inflating its order volume. Some of the improper sales practices, the company said, were carried out by its own personnel in “Jumia Force,” its network of commissioned agents.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- e-commerce
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M-Pesa Remains Primarily a Payments Tool, a 2019 CGAP Survey Reveals
The survey has revealed that an average M-PESA net balance is less than KES 1,000 ($10) and this figure remains constant whether the user has a bank account or not. These balances were the same across employment types and income levels.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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PayPal-Backed Money Lender Tala Raises $110M to Enter India
Tala looks at a customer’s texts and calls logs, merchant transactions, overall app usage and other behavioral data through its Android app to build their credit profile.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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The CEOs of Nearly 200 Companies Just Said Shareholder Value Is No Longer Their Main Objective
The Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers of nearly 200 major U.S. corporations, issues a statement with a new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” Investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers and supporting outside communities are now at the forefront of American business goals.
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In Sierra Leone, New Kiva Protocol Uses Blockchain to Benefit Unbanked
The National Civil Registration Commission developed the national digital identity platform with support from Kiva, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that allows people to lend money to low-income people around the world, as well as the United Nations Capital Development Fund and the United Nations Development Programme.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Private Equity in Senegal Gets Jump-Start With State-Backed Fund
The fund will target mid-sized companies in industries spanning from agriculture to healthcare by providing mezzanine finance, which is typically a combination of debt and equity.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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