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Nigeria’s Bank of Industry partners Gates Foundation, CGAP on financial inclusion
The Bank of Industry (BoI), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) have gone into partnership to deepen financial inclusion and poverty eradication in Nigeria.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Tanzania: Government Unveils 10-Year National Microfinance Plan
The Vice-President noted the implementation of the National Microfinance Policy would enable the low income population which was excluded from financial services to begin benefiting from the services.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Impact Investing Has it Backward: It’s Time to Prioritize the Needs of Social Enterprises, Not Just Investors
Impact investing is blissfully unaware – or intentionally ignorant – of social enterprises’ experience as they seek investments, contend Mara Bolis and Sarah Alexander. This process often involves accepting financial terms and/or partners that can distract from the social mission. Impact investing needs to start telling – and hearing – these businesses' stories, so they share a financing story that's emblematic of enterprises that prioritize social returns within fragmented enabling environments.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Helping Farmers Rebuild After Civil War Isn’t Charity; It’s Good Business
As an agribusiness owner in Africa, GADC founder Bruce Robertson has grown weary of the silver bullet solutions proposed for transforming rural economies. In 22 years in Uganda, he has yet to see a quick fix. But private enterprise has enormous potential to improve rural lives when donors and businesses collaborate, he says, explaining GADC's "replicable model with huge potential for expansion."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Funding Education With Impact: How We Can Address Student, Market Needs in India
Although education is one of the most funded causes among private social funders in India, including about US $45 million in impact investment per annum over 2014-2017, this has translated into near-universal access to education at primary school level but not in other education segments. Asian Venture Philanthropy Network's Martina Mettgenberg-Lemiere and Anh Nguyen propose some market-based strategies.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Investing
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Perspective: The Mis-Measure of Development
Today’s global development agenda is trying to be all things to all people. The Millennium Development Goals worked because they were few in number and sharply focused. By contrast, the MDGs' successor, the Sustainable Development Goals, comprise an eye-popping 169 targets, which means there is no focus at all.
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The Financial Lives of Struggling Americans: The Financial Diaries and The Unbanking of America
Elisabeth Rhyne of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion reviews two new books that take a look Americans' increasingly precarious financial lives. Both books examine America's top economic challenge – the crumbling of the economic foundation for many working-class and middle-class families – and they do so through the lens of financial services, an unusual but revealing perspective, Rhyne writes.
- Categories
- Finance
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Bitcoin’s rise in African markets is driven by an old Russian ponzi scheme
Cryptocurrency experts have touted the potential for their tech to transform the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable populations: refugees, the unbanked, those living on less than a dollar a day. Yet the story of Bitcoin’s social impact is more complicated than the headlines portray.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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