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Startup Accelerators Have Become More Popular in Emerging Markets — and They’re Working
Business environments in most emerging markets are complex and can be difficult for even the most experienced entrepreneur to navigate. So while running any startup is tough, we assumed that launching a new business in Mombasa would be much more difficult than running one in Menlo Park. However, we were surprised to find far fewer differences in the effects of acceleration than we had expected.
- Categories
- Investing
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The Protein Bottleneck: Are Insects the Solution to the High Cost of Livestock Feeds?
In 2012, 16.3 million tonnes of fish produced were used to make fish oil and fishmeal feed for animals. This threatens food security and is unsustainable. One solution to that problem, making the feed from Black Soldier Fly larvae, also has the potential to create thousands of jobs and a new agribusiness sector in Kenya, writes James Karuga.
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- Agriculture, Environment, Social Enterprise
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A New Era of Farming: Unlocking Innovations for Smallholders Via Non-Traditional Finance
Non-Traditional Finance (NTF) may be critical to unlocking innovation processes among smallholder farmers, and could represent an untapped opportunity to enable them to break the cycle of poverty. But there's a lack of guidance on promising practices for the systemic application of NTF to support scaling of smallholder farmer innovations. That's why MEDA launched a call for proposals for NTF ideas, for which the deadline is Oct. 6.
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- Agriculture, Finance
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Register for SEEP’s Conference, Oct. 2-4
The 2017 SEEP Network Annual Conference will bring together leading practitioners, funders, research organizations and private sector actors dedicated to promoting more inclusive and resilient markets and financial systems Oct. 2-4 in Arlington, Va. The conference will feature 25 peer learning sessions in four technical tracks, two plenary sessions and six SEEP Fail Fest sessions.
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- Investing, Social Enterprise
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No Internet? No Problem: Turning a Feature Phone Into a Digital Library Can Transform Lives
The cycle of poverty in developing countries is real and often riddled with misinformation. That's why the 3-2-1 Service on simple feature phones – which functions like a search engine without the internet – is so important. And people are willing to pay for it. This not only changes how users engage with their phone but also how international development agencies can engage with users to improve livelihoods.
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- Education, Social Enterprise, Technology, Telecommunications
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Powering Communities Through a Surprising Source of Renewable Energy: Human Waste
Around the world, a staggering 2.5 billion people lack access to decent toilets. That leads to far too many people getting sick from preventable diseases. Anne Healy and Erin Crossett of Development Innovation Ventures say the good news is that some enterprising companies are experimenting with ways to make human waste disposal profitable in the developing world.
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- Energy, Environment, Health Care, WASH
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Making a Case for the Business Case: New Ways to Provide Sustainable Financial Services to Low-Income Communities
The high numbers of people who participate in informal savings groups is appealing to financial service providers – there are hundreds of thousands of active groups whose self-selected members save weekly for a year, and share their accumulated savings – but it's not easy to tap into this market commercially. BFA recommends using a business case modeler to help acquire low-income people as customers in a sustainable way.
- Categories
- Finance
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Register for SOCAP: Get a $250 Discount
SOCAP17 is still over a month away, but September 1 is the last chance to get tickets for under $1,000. Act now to get SOCAP17 tickets for $945 (a savings of $550 off full-price SOCAP tickets) using discount code MP_NextBillion applied to the Summer Special rate. Register soon!
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise