NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Results

• Blog Post
  Financing Off-Grid Solar: A Pioneering Provider in Honduras Shows the Impact of Diversified Funding

  Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and many of its most remote regions remain unserved by the electricity grid. Richenda Van Leeuwen at Hummingbird Green Solutions and Richard Stuebi and Jesse Colman at Boston University explore how Soluz Honduras is bringing freezers and other solar products to these markets by leveraging a variety of different financing models — an approach that shows how diversified funding can enable businesses to serve even the hardest-to-reach areas and the poorest of customers.

• Blog Post
  Public Good vs. Profitable Exits: Why Public Innovation Agencies Must Stop Copying Venture Capital

  A new class of venture capitalist is emerging, but they aren’t Wall Street financiers or Silicon Valley tech bros. As Emre Eren Korkmaz at the University of Oxford argues, they are public innovation agencies that are shifting their funding approach: Instead of supporting high-risk research and innovations aimed at delivering societal benefit, they have begun to adopt the logic of venture capital, favoring commercially viable projects that are more likely to secure follow-on private funding. He explores the downsides to this shift, arguing that the world needs these institutions to do what private capital cannot or will not: supporting innovation for the public good, not just for profitable exits.

• Blog Post
  To Change the World, Change Your Economics: How Degrowth Can Shrink Overconsumption in the Global North While Allowing the Global South to Grow

  The global economy largely operates under a neoclassical economic structure, which emphasizes a reliance on markets, a deference to the private sector and a focus on constant growth. But according to Matt Orsagh and Steve Rocco at the Arketa Institute, this structure has a fatal flaw: It operates on a planet with finite resources and limited places to put our waste, but assumes that economic growth can go on forever. They argue that the world needs a new form of economics that reflects our environmental realities, one focused on "degrowth" — i.e., an effort to equitably downscale production and consumption in the Global North, without putting undue restrictions on the development of the Global South. They explore what this change might mean for the world's economy, the investing community — and countries in the Global North and South.

• Calendar Event
  Gender and Development: Lessons from Across Multilateral Development Banks

• Blog Post
  SACCOs, Social Collateral and Bitcoin Communities: A Filmmaker Documents New (and Old) Ways to Extend Financial Inclusion Past the Limits of Fintech

  Luke Willms worked at an African NGO, where he was tasked with creating short videos to showcase the positive impacts of its microcredit program. But as the video project progressed, his assumptions about the effectiveness of microfinance began to unravel. He would spend the next seven years filming stories from across Africa and other regions, exploring whether microlending still held relevance in a rapidly changing world. The resulting documentary, “Unbankable,” was released last year, with the goal of helping to reframe the global conversation around financial inclusion. He shares key stories from the movie, which show how Africa’s informal, trust-based financial systems offer models of resilience and adaptation that could find new applications in other emerging countries.

• Blog Post
  How India’s Non-Bank Financial Companies are Closing the MSME Credit Gap — And What Other Emerging Markets Can Learn from Their Success

  Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) make up around 90% of businesses and employ over half of the workforce globally, while generating up to 40% of GDP and creating 70% of formal jobs in emerging markets. Yet according to Sameer Nanda at Ugro Capital Limited, these businesses face an ongoing credit gap that, in India alone, amounts to an estimated ₹80 trillion. He explains how non-bank financial companies are addressing this gap by offering dynamic and flexible lending services designed for MSMEs — and shares useful lessons from their approach that can be applied in other emerging economies with similar credit challenges.

• News
  Econet Founder Strive Masiyiwa Unveils $720 Million Plan to Build Africa’s First AI Factory Network by 2026

  Under this vision, the continent would gain the infrastructure to conduct local AI research, development, and deployment.

• News
  Viewpoint: Ghana’s “Mission 300” Energy Pledge: Ambitious Words, but Oversight Must Deliver Action

  "For such a pledge to succeed, we must demand transparency, accountability, and protection of Ghana’s long-term interests."