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From COVID to Foreign Aid Cuts: How Community-Led Financial Access Can Help Women and Their Communities Weather Crises
The COVID pandemic had a substantial impact on women’s financial access in many emerging economies — an impact that persists to this day. Now, as Kathy Guis at Kiva explains, a new crisis is building, as foreign aid cuts and broader macroeconomic uncertainty reduce funding to financial service providers focused on women’s inclusion. She argues that despite the urgency of other global issues, access to financial services matters, and explores how Kiva hopes to grow its support for women and other vulnerable populations despite the challenging funding environment.
- Categories
- Finance
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Paymenow Bags $22.4 Million to Expand On-Demand Salary Services Across Africa
The funding, structured under a sustainable finance format, is one of the largest institutional bets to date on the earned wages access (EWA) model in the region.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- financial inclusion, fintech, lending, scale, startups
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Bfree Attracts $3 Million in Fresh Funding from Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund
The investment will support Bfree’s distressed loan portfolio financing in Africa, thereby improving the credit scores of the distressed borrowers, enabling them the access to credit from financial institutions in the future.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: 60 Decibels Study Finds Loans to Savings Groups Contribute to Stronger Financial Resilience in Africa
Through VisionFund’s Finance Accelerating Savings Group Transformation (FAST) programme, the study has demonstrated that access to capital combined with financial education can help businesses grow.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Google Drives AI to Boost Agriculture, Enrich Cultural Data in India
Google unveiled its new Agricultural Monitoring & Event Detection API, offering field‑level crop insights updated fortnightly, and launched the Amplify Initiative to build hyperlocal datasets across Indic languages.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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World Bank Grants South Africa a $1.5 Billion Loan for Infrastructure Upgrade and Green Energy Transition
Deteriorating rail systems, jammed ports and frequent blackouts have hindered vital industries like mining and auto manufacturing in South Africa, contributing to slow economic growth over the last decade in Africa’s most developed economy.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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US Wealthtech Waltz Preps Latin America Launch With New $25 Million Credit Line
The credit line has been provided by affiliates of Setpoint Capital, with Waltz now leveraging $50 million in combined equity and debt funding.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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Viewpoint: Afreximbank Downgrade Raises Questions About Bank’s Strategy
"The Cairo-based institution, which has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, often seems determined not to be bogged down by orthodox multilateral development bank practices."
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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