NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Solar Irrigation Solutions in Africa

When you have to hand-deliver water to irrigate your farm, you aren’t going to have the best possible crop yields. If you have to pay for water from a nearby pump, if one exists, you’re not going to be able to get very much if your total budget is less than a dollar a day and your crop yield is still going to be pretty limited. But if you can manage to access the underground water table using a solar-powered pump that does not cost much to run, you can ease the burden of everyda...

Source

Dowser (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

The Women Bringing Solar Power to Sierra Leone

A group of 12 women from villages in Sierra Leone is in the frontline of a battle to bring solar-powered electricity to rural communities. No small feat, given that rural Sierra Leone is not connected to power. The women were all trained at Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, in western ...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Uncategorized

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Business Incubator for Marginalised Youths Debuts

In 10 years from now, 40 million Nigerians will become job seekers, and most of them would be unskilled hands. What do we do with these job seekers? Generation Enterprise (GEN) raised this question last week in Lagos. It is GEN’s mandate to solve this problem. GEN, a model that provides an end-to-end solution to youth poverty and unemployment, brought leaders in Nigeria’s public, private, and social sectors together in Lagos to tackle the related issues of youth unemployment and...

Source

Business Day (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Exploding Malaria With Human-Sized Microwaves

Around the world almost a million people die from malaria each year, and half the planet's population, 3.3 billion people, live at risk of contracting the disease , mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Treatments for malaria, however, have never been a high priority for pharmaceutical companies. Most victims have little or no ability to pay, and profit margins on vaccines are thin. Now, our few lines of defen...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Health Care

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Banking on a Mobile Business

I t sounds like the lead-up to a bad joke: What do a mobile phone and a bank clerk have in common? Certainly the differences are more obvious than any similarities, but the two do share one crucial likeness: they both provide access to financial services. Mobile banking is becoming an increasingly popular service across Africa, thanks to a combination of both simplicity and availability. The ability to access basic financial services, such as deposits and transfer...

Source

Business Today (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Backpack Farms: Targeted Solutions to Help African Farmers Become More Resistant to Drought

This is part of a series highlighting innovations and possibilities for action for the famine in Somalia. Most news frames the famine and political conflict as near unsolvable; we’re examining the on-the-ground measures that can help - from the large scale and political to the local and preventative. Looking at graphic photos of starving Somalis or reading about the perils of drought in East Afr...

Source

Dowser (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Senegalese Village Wipes Out Malaria With Mosquito Nets And Fines For Not Using Them

We tend to think of innovation as something that happens at startups and dotcoms. But sometimes, the most powerful innovations happen at the end of a bumpy dirt road in rural Africa--in this case, a Senegalese village that has figured out how to virtually eradicate malaria. As the father of a 7-year-old daughter, I was touched and inspired by the story of another dad I met during my recent trip to Senegal. I visited El Hadj Diop in his hometown of Thienaba, Senegal, where he told me the...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Social Enterprise Spotlight: Just Markets For Ghana?s Women

Three years ago Danielle Grace Warren had gone fishing. She was part of a mission to build fish farms in Ghana. These farms, it was hoped, would help generate badly needed income and jobs. The literally graceful and ballerina-like Warren, a creative writer, knew from her experience in Haiti where she had worked on economic development projects that income and jobs were the key to lifting the Ghanaians out of poverty. But they needed to be lots of income and jobs. That simply wasn’t possib...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Agriculture, Health Care

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa