-
What Contests, Soda, and the Internet Have to do With Distributing Solar Power in Tanzania
Angaza, a runner up in the 2010 Harvard Social Enterprise Pitch for Change Competition, is an enterprise aiming to illuminate the world through modular solar home lighting and battery charging systems. Building on success and challenges of others, we studied a broad range of distribution models to avoid challenges that befall many social startups.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
An Emerging Platform: From Money Transfer System to Mobile Money Ecosystem
Mobile money is becoming an infrastructure backbone connecting clients with myriad financial service providers. Our investigation documented over 90 financial institutions - from small MFIs, and savings and credit cooperatives, to large banks and insurers - that are adding mobile money as a service delivery channel; and zero that were not.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
’The Price is Wrong’ (For Some Things) at the BoP
The Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s latest bulletin, "The Price Is Wrong," suggests charging small fees to balance access can dramatically reduce uptake, while raising little revenue. While this seems to contradict the entire development through enterprise agenda, a closer look suggests this view isn’t far from what we already know about BoP markets.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Charting the Future at Women’s World Banking
In the final post of a wide-ranging interview, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, discusses expansion at the organization to include multi-product servcies to individuals and explains why consolidation in would benefit the microfinance sector in the long term.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Mobilizing Savings Through Insurance
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, discusses the challenges and opportunities of match-savings programs and micro-insurance, and the importance of understanding clients. In Jordan, WWB is piloting a health insurance program where insurance products are coupled with loans, resulting in strong customer relationships.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Can Microfinance Ignite a Good Governance Epidemic?
By serving as examples of effective corporate governance, microfinance providers could succeed where so many financial institutions have failed and in ’infect’ their client and community networks with the ’disease’ of strong corporate governance. With almost 3 billion unbanked people still to reach, those are huge potential networks to infect.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Going to See ’To Catch A Dollar’? Tell Us What You Think
Tonight - March 31 - and only tonight, the curtain will go up on the documentary, To Catch a Dollar, in movie theaters around the United States. The film documents the travels of Muhammad Yunus as the Nobel Laurate spreads the word on microfinance - not in Bangladesh, India or Asia - but here ... in America.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Transforming Deserts: The 2011 International Property Rights Index
The 2011 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) was released last week, bringing to mind a vital - yet overlooked - global development debate about the role of property rights in improving economic opportunities at the base of the pyramid. In fact, property rights alone are rarely enough to spur financial sectors into small business lending.
- Categories
- Agriculture