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MSMEs Are the Backbone of Developing Economies: New Research Shows How Digital Platforms Can Boost Their Impact
To keep pace with the growing youth population, 600 million new jobs must be created globally over the next 15 years. Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) will be key to that effort, say Alina Kaiser at Caribou Digital and Annabel Schiff at the Mastercard Foundation’s FiDA Partnership. They explore how digital platforms can boost MSMEs in emerging markets, based on learnings from 27 micro-entrepreneurs in Kenya.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Ceramics in Global Development: How an Affordable, Overlooked Technology Could Spark a Micro-Scale Industrial Revolution
In the developing world, diseases caused by polluted air and contaminated water claim millions of lives. Yet initiatives to distribute clean cookstoves and water filters have often struggled to bring affordable solutions to poor communities. According to Reid Harvey at TAM Ceramics, both filters and cookstoves can be inexpensively produced with an unexpected technology: ceramics. He explores how a breakthrough in ceramic science and design, combined with a focus on local production and distribution, could boost entrepreneurship while delivering life-changing products to the poor.
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship
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Asian Development Bank approves $50 million for microenterprise development in Bangladesh
For the longer term, the project would develop microenterprise finance operational guidelines for microfinance institutions, including piloting for some partner organisations and a mobile-based financing application.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Press release: Citi and Banco Guayaquil Sign $20 Million Loan Agreement Benefiting Microfinance in Ecuador
With over 520,000 previously-unbanked clients that now have “Amiga Accounts” and a $70m loan book to finance microenterprises, Banco Guayaquil’s “Banco del Barrio” is one of the pioneering and most comprehensive inclusive finance programs in Latin America, significantly expanding access to financial services in Ecuador by leveraging a network of more than 4,400 non-bank customer touchpoints across the country.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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Female-owned businesses driving economic growth, reducing inequality in Ghana
Microenterprises owned by females have been promoted as a powerful engine of economic and social growth, poverty alleviation and a promenade to the elimination of gender inequality. At the same time, research has documented gender gaps in microenterprise business performance and investment, which can serve to reproduce gender inequality and hinder economic growth.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press release: Village Enterprise Promotes Campaign to End Poverty in Times Square
"Village Enterprise provides rural Africans living in extreme poverty with the tools and resources they need to start sustainable businesses and savings groups," said Village Enterprise CEO Dianne Calvi. "With the profits and savings from their businesses, entrepreneurs can send their children to school, feed their families more nutritious food, and break cycles of poverty that can span generations."
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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IBM’s Microfinance Blockchain in Kenya Tests the Viability of Hyperledger
IBM is back supporting a microfinance project using a Hyperledger blockchain to help administer small loans at low interest to food sellers in Kenya.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Microenterprise graduation leads to higher consumption, asset ownership
“Helping the ultra-poor escape extreme poverty is a global priority, but policymakers are faced with competing ideas about the best way to accomplish this,” said Village Enterprise’s CEO Dianne Calvi.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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