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Serving Smallholder Farmers in the Digital Age: Why it Requires Treating Data Like an Asset
As mobile technology becomes nearly ubiquitous, the next wave of users is expected to come from rural regions, where smallholder farmers produce the majority of the food yet often live in poverty. In these areas, data-driven agriculture is already creating a new economy – one in which data itself is the currency that can help lift farmers out of poverty. Bobbi Gray and Ellen Galdava discuss an upcoming Grameen Foundation paper, supported by USAID and FHI 360, on this quickly shifting dynamic.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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The Teacher-Researcher Divide: How Can Educators in Emerging Markets Make Better Use of Data?
Despite an explosion of high-quality research into K-12 learning outcomes in emerging markets, the data from those studies can be hard to interpret, leading educators to defer to their own experience and/or that of their peers instead. As a result, the best evidence on methods and strategies often goes unused by teachers. Sean Geraghty of the private school operator Bridge International Academies considers a recent partnership with the Liberian government and asks: How can educators truly incorporate the latest research into their lessons?
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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MENA startup data platform closes $1 million seed funding round
Having released over 20 reports since inception, a core focus of the MAGNiTT platform is education through data-driven analysis for its subscribers. The platform currently hosts 5,500 start-ups, over 12,000 users including over 300 individual investors and more than 150 funding institutions, be VCs or Angel Investors.
- Source
- Press release
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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India’s agritech startups are employing data mining and AI to improve crop yield, make farming profitable
Agritech startups seem to be having their moment in the sun. There are many startups like SatSure that are disrupting the Indian agricultural economy in unexpected ways. Intello Labs, for example, uses image-recognition software to monitor crops and predict the health of farm yields.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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‘Socially responsible’ investors reassess Facebook ownership
“The lid is being opened on the black box of Facebook’s data practices, and the picture is not pretty,” said Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland law professor who has written about Silicon Valley’s use of data.
- Categories
- Investing
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Press release: International Monetary Fund Releases Gender Disaggregated Financial Access Survey
As part of its commitment to support financial inclusion, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducts an annual Financial Access Survey (FAS). The FAS is a high-quality supply-side financial inclusion database with a global reach to support policy analysis and formulation in the financial inclusion area. The 2016 FAS round included a pilot to capture the financial access gender data gap and support the IMF’s analysis of women’s economic empowerment in boosting growth and reducing income inequality. [2] The pilot, which included the participation of 28 countries, revealed that in almost half of the participating economies, financial service providers had access to their customers’ gender information.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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JPMorgan Quants Develop Model for Socially Responsible Investing
Strategists at the firm have built an “ESGQ” quantitative metric that combines a company’s long-term corporate responsibility score with faster-moving data that isolates newsflow on potential controversies. The analysis then tracks momentum in the ESG scores to measure changes in market sentiment and price behavior.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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In a World of 5 Billion Mobile Phone Users, ID Policy Needs to Catch Up – Fast
With a global subscriber base of over 5 billion, the mobile ecosystem has created a digital platform that is increasingly connecting everyone and everything. Yet millions risk exclusion from this network – and the social, digital and financial exclusion this implies – due to lack of proof-of-identity. A new GSMA report offers a global perspective of the trends and linkages between access to mobile and access to official identification - and explores solutions for reducing the "identity gap."
- Categories
- Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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