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Viewpoint: Impact Investing As A Poverty Solution: The Case For Patient Pessimism
Based on my experience over the last 50 years in poverty reduction in the developing countries, the high expectations of impact investment are at best unreasonable.
- Categories
- Investing
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As Impact Investors We Often Miss One Thing: Who Has the Power?
Impact investors are rightly focused on the social impact of the businesses they invest in. But they often overlook a fundamental question: How does the enterprise localize power? Galen Welsch, co-founder of Jibu, explores why the need to empower local markets should be at the core of social business and investing decisions.
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Inclusive Innovation: How Two Mobile Technology Startups are Changing the Game in Microfinance
Securing a bank loan is an onerous task for anyone. But for the 2.5 billion unbanked people worldwide, the obstacles can seem insurmountable. And microfinance and village savings groups both have significant limitations, particularly for people without a credit history. June Sugiyama of Vodafone Americas Foundation explains how two winners of the foundation's annual Wireless Innovation Project competition are overcoming these limitations through mobile technology.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Four Ways to Support Vulnerable Youth: Key Takeaways from a Six-Year Livelihood Program
The world’s current generation of 1.8 billion young people is the largest in history. But harnessing this demographic dividend has proven difficult, as youth unemployment rates have remained persistently high for the last decade. Save the Children’s recently concluded Youth in Action program was designed to improve the socioeconomic status of 40,000 out-of-school youth in rural Africa. To find out how well it worked, the organization embedded 32 studies into the program. It recently shared the results – and Nikhit D’Sa discusses four lessons from the findings.
- Categories
- Education
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The New Face of Poverty: Why Unemployment isn’t the Issue – And How Financial Inclusion Can Help
When you think about poverty, what does it look like? Many people might picture an undernourished African child, or an elderly beggar sitting in the street. But as Oakam CEO Frederic Nze explains, the reality can be far different. Poverty today often involves the struggles of the working poor, and it’s defined less by extreme deprivation and more by lack of access – to clean water, to power, to basic education, and increasingly to the internet. Nze explores the implications of this shift for the financial inclusion and development sectors.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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China’s CFPA Microfinance raises $140m in Series C led by The Rise Fund
The latest funding round adds The Rise Fund to CFPA’s list of big-ticket investors, which now include Ant Financial, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, IFC, Sequoia Capital China, High Impact Capital Advisors, and Renda Puhui.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: The Promise of AI in the Developing World
When it comes to technology, there is a common misperception that only the rich benefit. But the innovations behind gadgets like iPhones and robotic vacuums have the potential to boost development and prosperity throughout the Global South.
- Categories
- Technology
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