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After the Grant Ends: Why Rural Water Utilities Fail — And What We Learned from Building One
For decades, rural water projects in low- and middle-income countries have followed a familiar pattern: Infrastructure is built, communities are trained, a ribbon is cut — and within a few years, the system stops working. After leading the early operations of Max TapWater, a social enterprise providing piped water in rural Bangladesh, Saif Islam identified a fundamental reason for these failures: Investment continues to prioritize capital infrastructure over the operational and maintenance budget needed to sustain it. He explores this challenge, and shares other lessons he has learned about how rural water facilities can sustain operations beyond the grant period.
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Analysis: Beyond the Signal: Why Africa’s Next Telecom Era Will Be Built Beneath the Surface
The subsea cable buildout underway represents the most significant transformation in the continent’s digital infrastructure since mobile telephony arrived in the 1990s. But capacity without distribution remains an abstraction; redundancy without policy coordination remains a vulnerability.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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UK Announces Extension of the Ayrton Fund and Transforming Energy Access Platform
The Ayrton Fund builds on innovative UK-international partnerships in more than 100 countries, which have already improved the lives of 46 million people across Africa, Asia and the Indo-Pacific, mobilised £3 billion in investment, and enabled more than a quarter of a million green jobs in the UK and abroad.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Global
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Holocene Closes Southern Africa’s First Dedicated Climate-Tech Fund
Holocene targets promising, local founders at the earliest stages, but who lack capital and hands-on operational support to get them to scale, especially in a nascent sector such as climate-tech.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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What a Decade of TRANSFORM Teaches Us About Partnerships
The playbook’s central message is that meeting today’s social and environmental challenges requires radical collaboration at speed and scale.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: 3IF Ventures Reaches USD $12 Million First Close to Scale Africa’s Inclusive Insurance Market
Africa’s insurance protection gap is one of the most underserved opportunities but also one of the most significant barriers to economic resilience on the continent.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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MTN Targets Nigeria’s $236 Billion Credit Gap as its $500 Billion MoMo Business Pushes into Lending
MTN Group is moving to turn its African mobile-money empire into something much bigger than a payments business, as the telecoms giant prepares to separate its fintech operations in Nigeria and Uganda, bring in strategic investors, and push into lending across some of the continent’s most underbanked markets.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Courageous Capital: How Africa Built its Own Tech Ecosystem
Africa’s tech sector has been thriving for almost three decades, during which its entrepreneurs have quietly built a self-sustaining ecosystem. And as Marsha Wulff at LoftyInc Capital explains, instead of government and charitable institutions taking the lead, it has been Africa’s own innovators who have developed its tech infrastructure and driven its commercial success. She explores how African entrepreneurs and investors have built a vibrant and resilient tech ecosystem that addresses the continent's unique needs — and taps its massive growth potential.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
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