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Entrepreneur-Friendly Inclusive Finance: A Survey of Brazilian MSMEs Highlights Key Lessons for Lenders
In Brazil, impact-focused lenders like Estímulo are successfully reaching small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with inclusive lending approaches. But as Carla Grados-Villamar at 60 Decibels and Lucas Conrado at Estímulo explain, inclusive finance is not just about disbursing loans — it’s about understanding entrepreneurs’ realities and adapting accordingly. They share findings from 60 Decibels' interviews with over 400 Estímulo loan applicants, highlighting lessons lenders can use to improve business outcomes for borrowers, and prepare non-borrowers for future credit opportunities. (In celebration of our 20th anniversary, NextBillion is highlighting key articles from our decades of coverage of different sectors on our homepage below, with a current focus on education.)
- Categories
- Finance
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Rwanda Launches $13 Million Outcomes-Based Early Childhood Education Programme
Building on its early childhood reforms, the Government of Rwanda is pioneering outcomes-based financing as a core part of its national strategy, linking funding to measurable improvements in the quality and inclusivity of early learning.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Are Impact Investors Really Listening?: Why Capturing Stakeholder Insights is Key to Impactful Investment Strategies
Collecting data is easy for impact investors; acting on it is harder. As Taanya Khare at Acumen explains, most impact investment firms turn data-driven insights into action through intentional spaces like investment committees or portfolio review sessions. But she argues that listening is about more than surveys or feedback loops — it requires investors to sit down with company teams to make sense of customer insights, identify blind spots and co-create better solutions and impact strategies. She shares what Acumen has learned from embedding listening and impact management into every stage of its investment process.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Analysis: Why Impact Investing Might Collapse and How to Stop It
The current paradigm of viewing impact in isolation from the systems surrounding investments is not sustainable. Applying a systems lens helps investors make better decisions related to sourcing, management, and measurement that lead to lasting positive impact.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Global
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Report: Reimagining the Future of Entrepreneurship Support in East Africa
A new report from WDI, "Reimagining the Future of ESOs in East Africa," integrates insights from accelerators, incubators, investors, ESO donors and intermediaries in the East African entrepreneurship ecosystem.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology, Transportation
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: New Facility Launched to Strengthen Water Enterprises and Expand Safe Water Access
The facility is designed to help promising water enterprises grow stronger and reach further.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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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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Press Release: Report: The Global Energy Alliance Shows How Partnerships Power Energy Access, Job Creation, and Carbon Reduction at Scale
As showcased in its newly released 2025 impact report, the Global Energy Alliance's public-private-philanthropy partnership model builds country-led coalitions and leverages catalytic finance and technical expertise to advance a sustainable energy future.
- Categories
- Energy, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Global
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