NextBillion - A WDI Publication

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• Calendar Event
  Inclusive Fintech Forum

• News
  Skoot Technology Launches Smart Electric Tuk-Tuk In Kenya

  The Skoot e3W runs on SUN Mobility’s battery swapping network. Drivers use swappable batteries instead of charging, allowing them to replace depleted batteries in minutes and return to the road.

• News
  Viewpoint: ‘Clean Energy for People and Planet’ Must Start With African Realities

  For Africa, the clean energy agenda cannot be framed as a matter of global urgency translated into continental compliance. It must be ‘glocalised’, by adapting to local political economies, governance realities, historical trajectories of (under) development, and importantly, a consideration of indigenous energy systems.

• Calendar Event
  AI for Communications Conference

• News
  Uber Eats Alum Lands $14 Million Seed from a16z to Fix WhatsApp Chaos for Latin America’s Doctors

  Solving the WhatsApp communication challenge in Latin America is critical because, according to Merin, patients in Latin America often choose their doctors based on their willingness to communicate using this channel.

• 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.