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Chutes, Ladders, and Safety Nets: How Microinsurance Helps African Development
James Abuh-Prah had owned a used electronics shop in a small market in Accra for 17 years before a flood took everything. It was late one night in October, and the torrential rains hadn’t stopped for hours. "By 5 a.m. the water was up to my chest," he says. He had taken out a $2,400 loan from his bank, Opportunity International, to use as capital to buy used televisions, stereos, and other electronics. Now, everything was destroyed. It’s like a game of Chutes and Ladders,"...
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa Rising
THE shops are stacked six feet high with goods, the streets outside are jammed with customers and salespeople are sweating profusely under the onslaught. But this is not a high street during the Christmas-shopping season in the rich world. It is the Onitsha market in southern Nigeria, every day of the year. Many call it the world’s biggest. Up to 3m people go there daily to buy rice and soap, computers and construction equipment. It is a hub for traders from the Gulf of Guinea, a region b...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Frequent Flier Miles at the Base of the Pyramid
OK, so you are a cell-phone user in rural Nigeria or Zimbabwe, and your provider is Econet Wireless. You’ve been a customer for a while, so you’ve accumulated loyalty rewards, just like airline frequent flier points. You live in a small hut in a village with no electricity, so you can’t use your phone as much as you would like, because you can only charge it on market day at the district headquarters. But now you can get a big discount on a solar lantern, or if you hav...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa Can Make Significant Progress Towards the MDGs
Most African countries may not achieve all the MDG targets by 2015. What matters more is that they all make significant progress in all areas of the MDGs and sustain, or even accelerate, this progress in accordance with their national conditions. Arguably, the political and economic conditions in Africa in 2011 are a lot better than they were...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The South African ’Wonderbag’ Soon to be UNFCCC Accredited
A South African project that initially attempted to tackle poverty has shown potential to mitigate the effects of climate change and is expanding beyond the country’s borders. By Kemantha Govender, BuaNews The Wonderbag project - a recyclable, insulated ’cooker’ - focuses on developing countries and communities with high poverty, shortage of fuel supplies, high i...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Spectacular Mobile Phone Revolution in Africa
Mobile phone service is gaining by leaps and bounds in Africa. Indeed, so many Africans have subscribed to wireless service that the continent is now the second-largest market in the world - having supplanted Latin America -- and behind only Asia, the top market. The expansion of mobile phones is likely to revolutionize Africa, a land plagued by poverty, disease, war...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Microcredit – Women Demand More Than Incomes
VALLADOLID, Spain, Nov 16, 2011 (IPS) - Microcredit can help a woman to have an income. It can, for better or worse, also transform gender equations in the public and private spheres. Making microfinance more meaningful for women in terms of real empowerment occupies much of the deliberations at the Fifth Global Microcredit Summit underway in this Spanish city. Apparently, not all microcredit institutions (MFIs) are aware of the importance of contribu...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Netflix for Batteries to Get Africa on the Grid
Around the world nearly 2 billion people don’t have reliable access to electricity. We’ve covered some of the inspiring plans and products aiming to compensate for that by making solar power cheap enough for off-grid homes in the developing world. But in Tanzania, where just 14 percent of peopl...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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