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Innovations in the Fight Against Famine
The famine in Somalia has shed new light on world hunger and the efforts individuals and organizations are undertaking to combat it. Aside from airlifting food and providing IVs, there is a larger problem in need of solving. Organizations such as ...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Smartphone Means Social Enterprise in Africa
What if I told you that Africa’s mobile revolution is at the centre of the continent’s social enterprise? That they are using their mobiles to do things that we in the West are only starting to think about. As apart from the usual of phones being used to text, talk and make mobile money transactions; the mobile networks are also being used to spread key information about farming and healthcare to isolated rural areas exposed to the costs of disease and drought. In Africa,...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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’Africa Can Feed the World’
Africa can feed not just itself but the world is a bold assertion to make at a time when famine stalks part of the continent. But this is precisely the claim made by Kanayo Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Avon’s Door-to-Door Model Adopted in Uganda
Steve Chiotakis: Cosmetic-maker Avon releases earnings today. Analysts expect it to at least match profits from a year ago. In Uganda, a U.S. organization is using Avon’s door-to-door model to help consumers get the products they need, but often are unavailable to the -- and this month that service is expanding. The BBC’s Anna Cavell reports from Kampala, Uganda. Anna Cavell: With a $75 loan, women in Uganda are being turned into en...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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AfDB Launches Microfinance Capacity Building Fund
The African Development Bank, in partnership with the government of Spain, has launched the Microfinance Capacity Building Fund - a multiyear effort to increase technical capacity building in the finance sector for the benefit of poor and low-income people in Africa. With a special focus on women and rural areas, the MCBF aims to increase transparency in A...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Southampton Students Bring Solar Lights to Madagascar
Families in Madagascar are benefiting from solar-powered lighting through a project set up by Southampton students. The University of Southampton’s SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) group set up a finance scheme to reduce the cost of the lights for rural families. The Right Light scheme has meant 98 families have reduced their use of kerosene lighting. Student Michael Austin said the scheme showed how students were "creating positive change in the...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Encouraging Agricultural Efficiency through Microfinance: Implications for Food Security
Maybe those that work in development are sick of hearing this little factoid, but for those who are out of the loop, let’s repeat it just one more time: the majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas. As expected, many of these are highly dependent on agriculture, whether or not it is their primary economic activity. So if they live in communities dedicated to agricultural production, then why is it that many of them still suffer from hunger? To begin with, their own...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Silicon Savanna: Mobile Phones Transform Africa
The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app - called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone - as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, claims Elma, t...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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