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Interview: Jonathan Chang, Executive Director of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation
Thirty-five-year–old Jonathan Chang is the Singapore-based founder of four Silicon Valley social enterprises. He has two degrees from Harvard and has taught social enterprise in Rwanda to genocide survivors. Here he explains why society should look at social entrepreneurship as a business, not a charity.
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- Uncategorized
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New Report: Small Merchants Offer Big Financial Inclusion Opportunities
Increasing micro and small merchants’ use of cashless payment systems will require broad participation and innovation from the financial sector, regulators, governments and the private sector. But the impact will be transformative for millions of small merchants, their customers and the broader economies in which they operate.
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- Uncategorized
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The Father of M-Pesa on Being Innovative in Africa
Nick Hughes is known for being at the forefront of innovation in Africa. He is responsible for founding and developing the M-Pesa mobile payments service in the mid-2000s while working at Vodafone. Today the platform is hailed as one of Africa’s top success stories. Over 70% of the Kenyan population uses M-Pesa, and other markets – such as Tanzania – are showing strong adoption.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Why One Indian Entrepreneur Is Investing In Smart Villages, Not Smart Cities
Varun Chandran grew up in a village in rural India. Till his late teens, he didn’t know what the Internet was. Now, he’s running a startup, Corporate360, that works with IT clients around the world. The global community, he says, should invest in smart villages as much as they are in smart cities.
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- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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What Digital Finance Means For Emerging Economies
Financial services are the lifeblood of an economy, enabling households and businesses alike to save, invest, and protect themselves against risk. Yet in many emerging economies today, the majority of individuals and small businesses lack access to basic savings and credit products, which hinders economic growth and perpetuates poverty.
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- Uncategorized
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This Startup Wants to Get Cameroon Talking About Sex
“Many people in Africa lack access to basic information regarding sexual health because of the taboo that surrounds the topic.” That’s according to Cameroonian entrepreneur Adamou Nchange Kouotou, founder of Africa Health Initiative – the creator of Kalanda app.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How We Can Support Bottom-Of-The-Pyramid Entrepreneurs, Like Trash Sifters
Across the developing world, enterprising people are sifting through garbage bins to build small businesses through recycling. It is in the informal economy, yet they have developed an economic system. This “waste economy” is providing new opportunities for people like Vusi Memela.
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- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Second-Generation Graduation: New Ways to Scale a Proven Anti-Poverty Model
This post, the first in a series by Fundación Capital exploring the Graduation strategy as a way to pull people out of extreme poverty, looks at how the concept is evolving. With more governments investing in Graduation, and more technological tools being applied, Tatiana Rincon suggests that "we stand at the edge of change that could lead to a world without poverty."
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- Education