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OPIC commits $50 million to global partnerships’ impact-first development fund
Many of the most inclusive and impactful solutions to poverty are fully sustainable, but not highly profitable. This fund will focus on delivering highly inclusive and highly impactful products and services that commercial markets fail to support.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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The New Face of Poverty: Why Unemployment isn’t the Issue – And How Financial Inclusion Can Help
When you think about poverty, what does it look like? Many people might picture an undernourished African child, or an elderly beggar sitting in the street. But as Oakam CEO Frederic Nze explains, the reality can be far different. Poverty today often involves the struggles of the working poor, and it’s defined less by extreme deprivation and more by lack of access – to clean water, to power, to basic education, and increasingly to the internet. Nze explores the implications of this shift for the financial inclusion and development sectors.
- Categories
- Finance
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MTN is planning to launch its mobile money service in Nigeria next year
The company will apply for a mobile banking license in Nigeria and plans a launch of its mobile money service in Africa’s largest economy in the second quarter of next year, its CEO said at a trade show in Cape Town on Tuesday (Nov.13).
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Accelerating Energy Access in India: New Research Highlights Keys to Developing a Nascent Industry
India’s clean energy industry is growing fast. But the challenges facing enterprises there – and the lessons they are learning – are neither unique to the clean energy industry nor to India. In fact, says Colm Fay at the William Davidson Institute, recent research suggests that India’s clean energy sector is following patterns that can be observed in any nascent industry. He explores how existing knowledge about how industries develop can help guide investment, and provide some clues about what the sector’s future may hold.
- Categories
- Energy
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It’s really expensive for Africans to live in their own cities
For the last decade or so, lists of the world’s most expensive cities usually include London, Hong Kong, perhaps New York, and then at least one African city—recently it’s been Luanda, Angola or an unexpected city like N’Djamena, Chad.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- emerging markets, LMICs, World Bank
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Africa’s secret weapon for economic growth and global development
Evidence shows that family planning is essential to lower maternal and infant mortality. Although both have decreased in the past decades, still today over 300,000 women and girls die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications, including unsafe abortions.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Microsoft connection: Capria fund, backed by Bill Gates, gets $20M from Paul Allen’s Vulcan
Allen’s investment arm Vulcan Capital committed $20 million to a fund being raised by Capria that will be used to back fund managers in “emerging markets.” Capria is raising $100 million for this fund and has selected the first couple firms it will invest in.
- Categories
- Investing
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Africa’s dominant mobile money service is going global
M-Pesa’s over 23 million active subscribers in Kenya will also be able to send and receive money through their phones and be connected to WU’s 500,000 global agents.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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