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The Bank of Industry and Bumpa to Empower 200 Youth-led MSMEs
"The collaboration, implemented under the youth and skills thematic area of the bank, aims to address the critical challenge of market access for young entrepreneurs . . . "
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Swedfund Boosts Financial Access in Southern Africa With $15 Million Loan to Select Africa
The investment aims to enhance access to credit for low-income individuals who are often excluded from traditional banking systems.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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SACCOs, Social Collateral and Bitcoin Communities: A Filmmaker Documents New (and Old) Ways to Extend Financial Inclusion Past the Limits of Fintech
Luke Willms worked at an African NGO, where he was tasked with creating short videos to showcase the positive impacts of its microcredit program. But as the video project progressed, his assumptions about the effectiveness of microfinance began to unravel. He would spend the next seven years filming stories from across Africa and other regions, exploring whether microlending still held relevance in a rapidly changing world. The resulting documentary, “Unbankable,” was released last year, with the goal of helping to reframe the global conversation around financial inclusion. He shares key stories from the movie, which show how Africa’s informal, trust-based financial systems offer models of resilience and adaptation that could find new applications in other emerging countries.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Visa and PhilGuarantee Ink Deal to Boost Credit Access for MSMEs in the Philippines
The agreement will have Visa and PhilGuarantee explore credit guarantee schemes tailored for MSMEs, widen lending access through partner financial institutions, etc.
- Region
- South Asia
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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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When AI Gets It Wrong: Lessons from a Women-Centered Design Experiment Highlight the Need for Inclusive GPTs
In emerging markets, women entrepreneurs continue to face systemic barriers to financial inclusion. And as Koheun Lee at CARE explains, ChatGPT and other AI models sometimes contribute to this exclusion, reinforcing societal biases that limit women’s potential for business growth and long-term financial health. She shares insights from CARE's attempt to build a women-centered design GPT — and proposes some practical steps AI users can take to mitigate bias against women when working with mainstream GPTs.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Trident Raises $2.6 Million to Support Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Digital ID Rollout
DRC Pass aims to enhance financial inclusion and improve public service delivery.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Moving Past the ‘Infrastructure of Hope’: Why Investors, Policymakers and Entrepreneurs Must Build a Modern E-Commerce Ecosystem in Southeast Asia
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for over 95% of all businesses in Southeast Asia, and millions of these entrepreneurs have migrated their hustle online. Yet according to Macy Castillo at Enstack, due to a lack of access to reliable payment options and other tools, they are attempting to build modern e-commerce businesses on a foundation of informal agreements and personal trust: an “infrastructure of hope” that leaves them exposed to payment fraud and locked out of formal finance. She argues that this is the central challenge for economic inclusion in Southeast Asia today, and explores Enstack's solution.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology