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Why Sustainable Food is Key to Impact Investing in China
Tao Zhang founded one of China’s first impact investing vehicles for environmental SMEs, with a focus on the industrial sector. But he realized that there's a pressing environmental issue brewing at the consumer level – a demand for animal products increasing in tandem with rising incomes, bringing greater greenhouse gas emissions and health disparities. Zhang shares how his Dao Ventures consortium is making consumers part of the solution by partnering with other impact finance entities to boost the availability of – and appetite for – alternative protein sources.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
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Press release: The PepsiCo Foundation Partners with CARE to Tackle Gender Inequality in Agriculture with an $18.2 Million Investment in She Feeds the World
Grant will provide resources and training to 5 million women farmers and their families worldwide to help them increase crop yields and income.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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The small study in Rwanda that could change the way the US does foreign aid
Development aid typically takes the form of in-kind goods and services: vaccines, medicine, education, housing, food parcels, etc. But giving out goods and services can be tricky and costly, from a logistical perspective, and runs the risk of giving people things they don’t want or need.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Study shows forest conservation is a powerful tool to improve nutrition in developing nations
More than two billion people in the developing world suffer from a lack of micronutrients—like vitamin A, sodium, iron and calcium. The result for children can be brain damage, stunted growth, and even death.
In response, food and farming programs have begun to consider how to do more than just increase production of staple crops, like rice and corn, to fight malnutrition.- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Low Tech, High Impact: An Affordable, Hand-Powered Innovation Aims to Boost Food Production in Africa
For many global development players, high-tech innovations are the go-to solution for challenges in emerging markets. But according to Taylor Quinn of JUST, Inc., low-tech approaches can be even smarter. He discusses the promising potential of locally made and hand-powered machines in emerging economy value chains, and explores how JUST is using one such device to improve food security, increase access to quality nutrition and promote entrepreneurship in Liberia.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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In Pursuit of Universal Health Care: Time to Take Public-Private Partnership to the Next Level
Public-private partnerships (PPP) are receiving increased attention for their promise to broaden developing countries' capacity to achieve universal health care. But though this attention is good, Dr. Naveen Rao of Merck for Mothers says we also need action. He outlines concrete steps that can make PPPs an integral part of national health policies and harness the local private health sector – not just big multilateral organizations, multinational corporations and NGOs.
- Categories
- Finance, Health Care
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As Africa grows more prosperous, obesity grows as a problem
A World Health Organization survey last year found that 15.3% of African women are obese, up from 11.4% a decade earlier. The rate for men more than doubled to 5.6% from 2.5%.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- nutrition, public health
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Developing countries will get sick before they get rich
Residents of developing nation cities are increasingly susceptible to obesity, particularly amid the mega-trends of urbanization, globalization, and industrialization of food supply. According to India’s National Institute of Nutrition, over a quarter of urban-dwelling men and nearly half of women are overweight.
- Categories
- Health Care
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