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Power Problem in a Changing Climate: The Renewable Energy Movement is Shortchanging Women and the Poor
What happens when a movement that aims to correct a global power imbalance develops an imbalance of its own? That’s the question facing renewable energy, says Solar Sister co-founder Neha Misra – a sector dominated by “largely white, often male, founder companies with Western expatriate leadership,” in which organizations with a social focus are sidelined by investors seeking quick profits. Misra discusses these and other uncomfortable truths – and why the movement must address them.
- Categories
- Energy
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Rwanda, The Emerging Economy To Watch
The statistics explain why Rwanda has become Africa’s poster child for progress. The country has reduced reliance on donations and currently, domestically funds about 84% of the budget up from about 36% two decades ago.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: My problem with ‘emerging markets’
The terms "emerging markets," "developing nations" and the antiquated "Third World" have always rubbed me the wrong way and not just because I grew up in Mumbai, live in Singapore and do business across Southeast Asia. These terms bother me because they prevent people from seeing how dramatically the world has changed, especially over the last decade.
- Categories
- Investing
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The Donor-Funded Dilemma: What’s Stopping Emerging Countries from Developing Private Markets for Contraceptives?
In sub-Saharan Africa, the private sector provides family planning solutions to almost 40 percent of women. But that isn’t the case in Malawi, a country that’s long been dominated by donor-funded commodities. Erika Beidelman and Andrea Bare at the William Davidson Institute explore Malawi's family planning landscape, highlighting five factors that may be limiting the private sector’s involvement – issues that may apply to other countries with histories of donor-funded healthcare.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Inexpensive Impact: The Case for Frugal Innovations
Over 4 billion people around the world lack necessities like food, water, energy, health care and housing. This represents not only a major social challenge but a major market, as low-income consumers have an annual purchasing capacity of US $5 trillion. Rajat Chabba and Sheena Raikundalia at Intellecap explore how entrepreneurs are developing innovative, frugal products to meet these customers’ needs – and why an ecosystem approach is needed to help them scale their solutions.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
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It’s really expensive for Africans to live in their own cities
For the last decade or so, lists of the world’s most expensive cities usually include London, Hong Kong, perhaps New York, and then at least one African city—recently it’s been Luanda, Angola or an unexpected city like N’Djamena, Chad.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- emerging markets, LMICs, World Bank
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Africa’s secret weapon for economic growth and global development
Evidence shows that family planning is essential to lower maternal and infant mortality. Although both have decreased in the past decades, still today over 300,000 women and girls die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications, including unsafe abortions.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
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