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PayPal Commits $100 Million to Accelerate Digital Growth Across the Middle East and Africa
This strategic investment will be deployed through a mix of minority investments, acquisitions, PayPal Ventures funding, people, and technology deployments that will help local businesses scale, etc.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Global
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Consultants at a Crossroads in Global Development: New Research Reveals their Challenges — And Highlights Strategies for Navigating the Current Disruption
The dismantling of USAID earlier this year has had many ripple effects, including over 238,000 global jobs lost at the agency and its implementing partners. But according to development consultants Alethia Wong and Lorenz Wild, the plight of independent consultants working in global development — who are often not represented in workforce statistics — hasn't received much attention. To better understand these impacts on the consulting ecosystem, they launched a survey of independent consultants earlier this year: They share the results in this article, exploring how development consultants are pivoting to earn income and how contracting companies can support them — and sharing advice from job recruiters for consultants looking for full-time roles.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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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.
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China Strikes $1.4 Billion Deal With Zambia, Tanzania for Railway Upgrade
China, Zambia and Tanzania have struck a $1.4 billion deal to modernise the ageing Tanzania–Zambia Railway, a lifeline for moving copper out of southern Africa.
- Categories
- Investing, Transportation
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Brazil’s Enter Raises $35 Million Series A at $350 Million Valuation
The firm specializes in investing in breakthrough technologies across various sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, energy, and defense.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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Press Release: New Facility Launched to Strengthen Water Enterprises and Expand Safe Water Access
The facility is designed to help promising water enterprises grow stronger and reach further.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: The limits of AI in Social Change
More actors—from grantmaking to service delivery—are exploring the use of AI. However, the excitement around scale and efficiency often overshadows a critical question: What does it mean to bring machine-generated abstraction into systems built on trust, context, and relationship?
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Global
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Beyond Shock, Money or Mandate: Why African Banks Aren’t Taking Bold Climate Action — And What it Will Take to Move Forward
Africa is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Yet though climate finance has emerged as a growing solution, African banks have yet to truly ramp up their climate lending. As Carla Legros and Anthony Mbithi argue, one reason for this lack of urgency is that the financial case for this lending has rarely been framed in ways that resonate with how banks operate — namely, as a clear money-making opportunity in the near to medium term. They share a framework for understanding financial institutions' level of engagement in climate finance, providing funders and policymakers with a tool they can use to match their interventions to banks’ institutional reality.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing
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