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Impact Investing in Latin America Takes Off
The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), in partnership with the Latin American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (LAVCA) and LGT Impact Ventures, released a report today on the growing landscape of impact investing in Latin America.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Latin America
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Betting Craze Powers Mobile Money to 20 Percent Growth in Kenya
The volume of cash moving through mobile money transfer platforms grew by a fifth in the first six months of this year, powered by increased uptake of cellphone-based gaming, industry data shows.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani to Start Microfinance Company
Mumbai: Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, Vijay Kelkar, former finance secretary and chairman of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys Ltd and the architect of Aadhaar, are joining hands to start a microfinance institution (MFI).
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Maj Targets Andes Nations With $100 Million Micro Finance Fund
Maj Invest, a Danish asset manager with $8 billion in assets, is looking to boost acquisitions in the micro finance industry in the Andean region. The Copenhagen-based asset manager is in the process of raising capital to grow the size of its Maj Invest Financial Inclusion Fund II to $100 million by June from $75 million now, according to Kasper Svarrer, who oversees Maj’s private-equity business in emerging markets.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid: Exploring the “digital poverty stack” – Part 2
In the first post in this series, we proposed that donors and governments advance digital and financial inclusion by focusing more on creating public goods that enable the broader ecosystem, rather than on peripheral innovation in service delivery. In this second post, we discuss the implications of this shift and highlight some new efforts to move the fields in the right direction.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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Nigeria’s Paga Is Succeeding Where Others Mobile Money Providers Failed
Paga, the biggest mobile money service provider in Nigeria, plans to increase its agents across the nation to 30,000 by 2018 as it seeks to become the county’s largest mobile financial access points across Africa’s most populous nation. The mobile money services provider, which was founded in 2012, currently has 10,104 agents in 35 states across Nigeria, with 3,000 in the commercial city of Lagos.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid – Exploring the ‘Digital Poverty Stack,’ Part 1
Donor investments to leverage technology have largely failed to achieve their imagined potential, often producing sub-scale pilot projects which do not solve a real problem. Instead, donors should focus on building a “digital poverty stack,” a set of interoperable and reusable digital tools that can be built into a large number of applications.
- Categories
- Technology
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Microinsurance policies to be issued to half a million vulnerable people in India
The International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) will partner with Uplift India Association to enable over 200,000 microinsurance policies to be issued in India in the next five years, providing coverage to half a million low-income people in the country.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia