NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Can The iPad Revolutionize Rural Agriculture?

The iPad’s fairly steep price has kept it firmly entrenched in the developed world. That’s starting to change, however, as evidenced by efforts from Exprima Media and coffee importer Sustainable Harvest to bring the iPad to coffee co-ops and farmers in East Africa, Mexico, and South America.

Source

FastCo.Exist (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Agriculture, Technology

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Tags

supply chains

East Africa: Boost for Agriculture

The fight to secure food and income for millions of small holder farmers in eastern Africa, a region that experiences severe food shortages from time to time, is poised to get additional ammunition with the construction of a science research block by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Source

allAfrica (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Agriculture

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Tags

smallholder farmers

Africa Not Fit For Print; The ’Light’ Side Of The ’Dark’ Continent

A Chinese, Latin American, and North American student are sitting in a classroom. The teacher pulls out a map of Africa, and asks ’tell me what you see". The Chinese student speaks of opportunity and business; South African steel, Congolese minerals, and Angolan oil to power his country’s growth, and an endless list of future contracts for Chinese-built roads, bridges, and infrastructure to link the continent. The American reflects on Darfur, the Rwandan Genocide, thatched-roof villag...

Source

The Huffington Post (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Note From the Horn of Africa: Leveraging Mobile Technology to Link Somali Youth with Jobs

Read the news, and initial reports about the Horn of Africa 1 are grim with famine and conflict dominating the headlines. But despite a food crisis and flare-ups of violence, key areas of the economy are growing steadily. Even ...

Source

KDID (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Training and Mentoring Give Boost to Uganda Clean Cookstoves Producers

A five-year programme rewards entrepreneurship across East Africa by supporting micro-businesses to establish energy services and create employment opportunities in rural areas. Willy Bamwenyena, 25, stands out as a young resourceful entrepreneur, who has been able to identify the energy gap in his community, in rural Uganda, and turned the need into a business opportunity. The GVEP-led Devel...

Source

GVEP International (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Kenya Has Mobile Health App Fever

Mobile health platforms are fast emerging in Kenya, where one startup’s newly launched mobile health platform is attracting nearly 1,000 downloads daily, and the dominant telecom, Safaricom, has forged a partnership that will give its 18 million subscribers access to doctors. A World Bank official sees significant promise from such efforts, pointing to the fact that 50 percent of all Kenyan banking is already done on mobile phones-suggesting that the population is ready to go mobile...

Source

Technology Review (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

How Biochar Will Help Kenya Go Green And Save Money

Re:char is a pioneering company that sells kilns to farmers in Kenya that allow them to convert their farm waste into what’s known as biochar, which can then be used for cooking. As an enterprise, Re:char seeks to deliver a "triple bottom line," expanding the uses of sustainable alternatives for energy, providing a cost effective solution for farmers in an effort to combat poverty, and stemming deforestation in Africa by encouraging use of biochar as cooking fuel instead of cutting down t...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa’s Mobile Pricing Wars

The increasing availability and ownership of mobile phones across much of Africa has brought numerous impressive benefits to ordinary Africans. And with the costs of calls, data-usage and handsets falling rapidly in many African countries, there has been a continuous rise in the number of mobile phone users across the region - in fact, the continent-wide growth rate of 20% makes Africa the fastest growing market for mobile phon...

Source

Think Africa Press (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa