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Interoperability is the Answer to Scaling Up E-mobility in Africa: What the Continent Can Learn from the EU and India’s Divergent Approaches
Electric mobility in Africa is an emerging but highly fragmented market, defined by uneven policies, diverse vehicle types and limited scale. As a result, according to Ashay Abbhi at Intellecap and Nyaga Kebuchi at Sustainable Transport Africa, interoperability has become a critical enabler for the sector. They explore how interoperability — the ability of battery or charging systems to work seamlessly with multiple fleets of vehicles — can turn distributed hardware systems into a usable network, and discuss how the EU and India’s different routes toward interoperability can inform Africa's e-mobility transition.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Transportation
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A New Model for Rural Water Infrastructure in Kenya: Why Sustainability Lies Not in Building More, But in Maintaining Better
In Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands, water is more than a basic need: It is a lifeline. Yet according to Cecilia Gamba at LeFil Consulting, despite billions in donor investments in water infrastructure over the past two decades, much of rural Kenya remains underserved. As she explains, one reason for this lack of progress is that rural water systems routinely collapse due to a chronic failure to fund and manage operations and maintenance. She shares learnings from a pilot program that tested an innovative market-based approach to managing rural water systems, exploring their implications for other water-focused businesses and initiatives serving rural communities.
- Categories
- WASH
- Tags
- governance, rural development, water
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AI Risk Management in Digital Finance: Protecting Africa’s Underbanked from Invisible Threats
Digital finance has been a game-changer for financial inclusion across Africa. But as information technology security analyst Nathaniel Adeniyi Akande explains, many communities remain excluded — and though AI-powered lending tools offer new opportunities to reach them, these tools also introduce new risks that can undermine trust or even exclude the people they are designed to serve. He argues that it is digital lenders’ responsibility to anticipate and mitigate these threats, and explores several practices that are essential to AI risk management in the sector.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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African Development Fund Seeks Historic Shift to Tap Capital Markets
Currently prohibited by its charter from borrowing, the ADF aims to raise $5 billion every three years in “patient capital” to support Africa’s lowest-income economies.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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It’s Time to Rethink Universal Health Coverage in Africa: Introducing ‘Access-as-a-Service’
As global health funding contracts, traditional brick-and-mortar healthcare delivery models are becoming financially and operationally unsustainable, in Africa and across low- and middle-income countries. Joanne Peter at Jhpiego and Rob Beyer at Villgro Africa argue that this raises the need for innovative new pathways toward universal health coverage. They propose one such approach, developed through their work at the HealthTech Hub Africa: "Access-as-a-Service," a model that combines in-person care options with first-line healthcare provided through digital channels.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Ola Krutrim Acquires AI Platform Bharatsah’Ai’Yak
With this acquisition, Ola Krutrim plans to integrate BharatSah’AI’yak into its LLMs, cloud infrastructure, and agentic platform Kruti.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Senegalese E-Health Startup KERA Raises $10 Million Funding from IFC
Senegalese e-health startup KERA Health Platforms has raised US$10 million in funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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DOGE is WEIRD: Why India’s Public Sector Consulting Ecosystem Should Not Follow in America’s Footsteps
As part of its efforts to reduce U.S. government spending, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken aim at public expenditures going to private consulting firms. According to Manoshij Banerjee, and Mohammed Shahid Abdulla at IIM Kozhikode, this could inspire similar efforts in emerging markets like India, fundamentally reshaping how these governments approach external expertise. They argue that this would be a mistake, explaining why DOGE's approach is “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic), and why it would be counterproductive to apply it to India’s unique governance landscape.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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