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Creation Investments Closes Global MFI Fund at $32M
Creation Investments Social Ventures Fund I, a global microfinance-focused private equity fund, has made a final close at $31.8 million. The fund is now eyeing investments in Asia, besides Latin America and Eastern Europe. The Fund’s investor base includes 74 US and European institutional investors along with family offices and high net worth individuals. Creation Investments Capital Management, LLC, is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The fund has till date deployed half of this...
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Energy for the BoP Made ’Simple’
Simpa Networks manufactures a solar household system that, unlike some others, is off-the-shelf, and easy to install and maintain. Inspired by mobile phone prepayment systems, the big innovation is Simpa’s unique "Progressive Purchase" pricing model, a micropayment system specifically designed to fit the unpredictable incomes of the poor.
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- Energy
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2010: The Year of Lessons in Corporate Governance
Sometimes corporate governance is taken for granted; other times it’s totally ignored. Either way, the year 2010 has illustrated the need to ramp up corporate governance on the development through enterprise agenda.
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Practical Progress Via the ’Opportunity Collaboration’
In October, the Opportunity Collaboration convened a group of 300 social investors and entrepreneurs to generate a strong cross-pollination of ideas and action for poverty reduction. In a recent interview, Founder and CEO Jonathan C. Lewis provided an update on the OC’s impact and shared some unvarnished views on the state of microfinance.
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- Impact Assessment
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How to Save Microfinance from the Indian Government
Microfinance is on the brink of collapse in Andhra Pradesh and across India, but the market for banking to the ultra poor will not disappear. Therefore, the time is ripe for a discussion about the core competency of microfinance and what institutions will fill this void in the coming years, be they for profit or not.
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An Update from the Financial Services for the Poor Team at the Gates Foundation
On November 16 and 17, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hosted a Global Savings Forum which brought together leading players from around the world. The foundation presented its strategy to provide millions with affordable access to safe places to save.
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Break No Promises
With $500 million and marching orders from the Gates Foundation, banks, microfinance institutions, mobile phone operators, regulators, retailers, and telecom companies, will now venture into a world filled with informal financial mechanisms, often deeply embedded in culture and history. Will these informal mechanisms be brought along or trampled?
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Financial Services for All Kenyans: Equity Bank and M-PESA Go Head to Head
Kenya is home to two extraordinary, but very different, financial service providers that have reached massive scale with unprecedented speed: Equity Bank and Safaricom’s M-PESA.
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