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Mobile Money Providers Score a Major Win – But Are They at Risk of Losing it All?
According to the GSMA’s recently launched 2019 State of the Industry report, mobile money achieved some major milestones last year: There are now more than 1 billion accounts, and for the first time, the majority of transaction values are digital. But according to Arunjay Katakam, mobile money providers will soon face a new challenge that could upend their industry, as internet-based "over-the-top" payments providers are poised to transform the competitive landscape.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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AWS partners with Kenya’s Safaricom on cloud, consulting services
Amazon Web Services has entered a partnership with Safaricom — Kenya’s largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How ‘Market-Creating Innovations’ Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty: A Q&A with Efosa Ojomo
Efosa Ojomo is a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute and a rising star in the world of impact-focused business. He has spoken and written extensively about the potential of innovation to lift developing countries out of poverty – including in his recent book “The Prosperity Paradox," co-written with Christensen. In this Q&A, Ojomo discusses the concept of market-creating innovations, and their unique value as a global development tool.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, NextBillion Originals
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The Development Tool Nobody’s Using: Why it’s Time for the Women’s Empowerment Sector to Leverage Media and Advertising
In women’s economic empowerment circles, there’s no shortage of initiatives involving corporate partnerships with NGOs - often focused on agriculture or garment supply chains. But as Mara Bolis at Oxfam points out, this focus has led the sector to overlook other potential areas of impact – including media and advertising. Sharing some compelling examples, she argues that media could have as much – or even more – influence in shaping women’s economic opportunities as changes to global value chains.
- Categories
- Technology
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How the Digital Economy is Transforming Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
While there's a lot of discussion of the thriving digital economy in countries like China, the potential for growth in one vast region remains woefully unrecognized — Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Aleksandr Gevorkyan and Norean Sharpe at St. John’s University discuss the region's emerging digital powerhouses, and argue that – despite some key remaining challenges – these post-socialist countries are very much open for business.
- Categories
- Technology
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The Rise (and Rise) of the Gig Economy in Kenya – And How to Take It to the Next Level
The gig economy is growing fast in East Africa, fueled by a young population and burgeoning mobile and smartphone penetration. Countries like Kenya now have gig platforms offering everything from taxi rides to cleaners and handymen, and analysts say this is only the beginning. Gituku Ngene at Google.org Youth Impact Labs explores the gig economy's growing impact, the barriers it faces – and solutions that could unlock its full potential.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Is Your Data Collection Program Ready to Go Mobile? Four Steps (And a Free Guide) to Help You Get Started
From decision support to enhanced communication with beneficiaries, mobile data collection can be an incredibly useful tool for impact-based organizations. But for all its benefits, it's no silver bullet, cautions Sam Farnham at Dimagi. Farnham stresses the importance of doing due diligence on collection methods before moving onto digital tools, and offers a free guide for determining mobile data collection's relevance for your organization in this constructive post.
- Categories
- Technology
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Study: Mobile and Social Media Users in Emerging Markets Have More Diverse Social Networks
Instead of isolation, the study found that smartphone users in these markets, and particularly those who also used social media, were more regularly exposed to people with different racial and ethnic backgrounds, different religious preferences, different political parties and different income levels, compared to those without a smartphone.
- Categories
- Technology
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