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Billion-dollar tech startups hold promise for China’s economy
Chinese tech companies listed in China and Hong Kong have seen their shares plunge this year, amid a market shakeout. But while the Shanghai Composite Index is down about 20% since the beginning of 2018, analysts say that there is still appetite for good startups.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Deep Dive: Two of America’s Wealthiest Philanthropists Are Teaming Up to Protect the Oceans
They’re calling it the Bloomberg-OceanX initiative, and it will coordinate activities, to some extent, between Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Vibrant Oceans Initiative, and Ray and his son Mark Dalio’s OceanX, an exploration and media outfit.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
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New Income Tax in Rwanda Causing Major Financial Strain for Many Mobile Money Agents
More than 7 million Rwandans do their banking through their cellphones, but many of the agents who facilitate the banking transactions never declared their income to the country’s tax authority. Now the tax authority has started taking a 15-percent withholding tax from these agents’ incomes with the cellphone provider, plunging some of these agents into financial turmoil.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Big Tax Break for Socially Responsible Investing
Opportunity zones, pushed last year with bipartisan support, were created for a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. They hark back to plans from the 1980s meant to steer capital into blighted neighborhoods.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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South Africa to start building affordable smartphones
Developed by Rwandan businessman and billionaire Ashish Thakkar, the Mara group at the Africa Investment Forum announced ambitious plans to develop manufacturing plants in Rwanda and in South Africa.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Alipay to acquire 45% shares of Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank
Alipay is a part of the internet giant Alibaba, which is Chinese retail, internet, technology, and AI company. On the other hand, Telenor Microfinance bank is Pakistan’s first scheduled microfinance bank that provides small loans to people who aim to set up their own business to come out of poverty.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- microfinance
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa’s dominant mobile money service is going global
M-Pesa’s over 23 million active subscribers in Kenya will also be able to send and receive money through their phones and be connected to WU’s 500,000 global agents.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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