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Understanding the average effect of microcredit
Microcredit trials show only moderate variation in effects across different settings, suggesting that the average effects of these loans are small.
- Categories
- Finance
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Jim Yong Kim resigns as World Bank president
Jim Yong Kim has announced he is stepping down as the head of the World Bank, in a move that sent shockwaves through the international aid community.
- Categories
- Finance
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Viewpoint: Ethiopia’s wheat yields are among the worst in Africa, this is what it is doing to change this
Many farmers fail to adopt modern inputs or farming techniques that would increase productivity due to several constraints, such as lack of available technology, limited liquidity, high perceived risk, constrained access to information, and poorly functioning output markets.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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In Bengaluru, pay in coins to access clean, safe drinking water
Both private and government ATMs are competing with each other to capture the market of drinking water in the city.
- Categories
- WASH
- Region
- South Asia
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Task force on digital financing of UN SDGs launched
“We have already seen how technology has helped expand financial inclusion — itself an important goal — by 1.2 billion people in just six years,” said Guterres.
- Categories
- Finance
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Viewpoint: The value of nature in smart development
Building smart requires governments and businesses to recognise nature’s role in spurring economic growth and ensuring ecological and human health, writes Maxwell Gomera.
- Categories
- Environment
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The New Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Because of this overall reduction in extreme poverty, the conversation about the bottom of the pyramid has shifted from how to alleviate poverty to how to address deep inequality — and not just in developing countries. A comparison of the world economic pyramid from my father’s original paper with 2017’s numbers tells an interesting story.
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PayGo vs. MFIs: What Works Better for Energy Access Consumer Financing – And Does it Have to Be Either/Or?
Many last-mile customers can’t afford clean energy products without financial solutions to help pay for them. Energy enterprises often meet this need in two different ways: by partnering with microfinance institutions (MFIs) to provide loans to customers, or by offering pay-as-you-go (PayGo) financing options. The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s CleanStart program has supported energy providers using both of these models, and Teresa Le, an energy finance consultant at the program, explores their relative merits and challenges.