-
Resilience Meets Disaster Economics: Investing to stop disasters before they start can save lives and money
Global needs for crisis response are increasing. From drought in the Horn of Africa to battering storms in Haiti, natural disasters are becoming common and responding to them can be expensive. At the same time, donor funds are becoming scarce. This confluence of circumstances should drive a change in how the world funds crisis response.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
In Microsoft’s ‘4Afrika’ launch, a surprising game-changer
In the next three years, the Microsoft Afrika Initiative aims to “help place tens of millions” of smartphones in the hands of African consumers, bring 1 million small and medium-size African businesses and nonprofits online, train 100,000 African university graduates (and find jobs for 75,000 of them), and pilot low-cost wireless broadband in Kenya using “white-space” spectrum.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Diaspora-driven development: how to turn wealth to health in Bangladesh
A large number of Bangladeshi expatriates are unskilled labourers so cash transfers will still dominate the way they contribute to development back home. However, due to high tax on remittances and high money transfer fees, many chose to use informal channels. The Daily Star, a Bangladesh English language broadsheet reported that up to 24% of remittances are brought into the country through informal channels. Reducing tax, as well as transfer fees by organisations such as Western Union could encourage more people to use formal channels and hence increasing government revenues
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
-
Where are the poor? : Lessons to share from BRAC’s poverty ‘graduation program’
In the countries that have some incarnation of the “graduation program” targeting the ultra-poor that BRAC began first experimenting with in the 1990s, communities themselves are also grappling with the question: Where are the poor? It’s a question that large scale aid agencies, impact investors, social enterprises, multinational companies and others ask on a regular basis. So, we thought those stakeholders and others would benefit from learning a bit more about our process.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
Mozambique : Is impact investment the answer for agribusiness?
Foreign investments in Mozambique face an incredibly challenging business environment. Impact investors are filling in the capital gap that exists in developing countries such as Mozambique by providing early and mid stage growth capital to companies with a good track record, often without need for collateral and at risk adjusted rates compared to those available on the local market.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
Deal leaves risks for global health to fall or be pushed off the cliff
Will the U.S. government's fiscal cliff deal mean steep drops in global health and research funding?
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
-
Eight is Enough: Preventing pregnancy after childbirth
Shumba Berisso arrived at an MCHIP-supported facility in Ethiopia in labor with her eighth baby. After the delivery, she turned her head away from her newborn and sobbed silently, saying she had no means to care for the child. That’s why MCHIP and others have successfully introduced post-partum contraception around the world.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Inequality and accountability key to post-2015 development, report says
Save the Children outlines its proposals for the development agenda after the millennium development goals expire in 2015
- Categories
- Environment