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Africa’s secret weapon for economic growth and global development
Evidence shows that family planning is essential to lower maternal and infant mortality. Although both have decreased in the past decades, still today over 300,000 women and girls die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications, including unsafe abortions.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zimbabwe to review mobile money tax after backlash
Using official 2017 statistics on total mobile money transaction value, the tax hike increases government takings from the service by almost ten times.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech, public policy
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The Missing Link in the Blockchain: The Need for Trust in a ‘Trustless’ System
Blockchain has become the ultimate tech buzzword, and development organizations are seeking to apply it in projects of every stripe. But as Rose Davis discovered in researching the technology’s social impact applications for Stanford, reliable digital identification is an essential precursor to many blockchain initiatives. Does a distributed ledger that has supposedly transcended the need for centralized oversight actually require some form of verification from trustworthy authorities? And if so, who should provide it? Davis explores these questions in this thought-provoking post.
- Categories
- Technology
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Viewpoint: Tax on internet, mobile cash will dim ‘Silicon Savannah’ dream
Kenya is a rising star in ICT and is fondly referred to as the “Silicon Savannah”. ICT exhibits potential to be a key player in turning around an overburdened economy and could even haul Kenya into industrialisation. Over-taxing it is hardly the way to run around the wheel and reinvent growth.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech, public policy, regulations
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Navigating fintech’s rise: IMF, World Bank launch guide for policymakers
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank jointly released a paper intended to guide policymakers around the world in their handling of the rise of financial technology — commonly known as fintech.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- fintech, public policy
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Viewpoint: CalPERS election earthquake should shake up responsible investment narrative
This argument is that the CalPERS Board is a captive of the staff, which itself is in turn a captive of favored investment consultants and asset managers. Given large union support for Mathur, the Naked Capitalism headline partially read, “Repudiation of Captured Board and Labor Leaders.”
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing, public policy
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Could this be the start of the end of world poverty?
There have been extraordinary achievements over the past 15 years on many fronts. Extreme poverty has fallen dramatically and child deaths have halved. Yet the pace of global poverty reduction is slowing and the number of extreme poor in Africa is still rising.
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Twice as many African presidents made it to China’s Africa summit than to the UN general assembly
A Quartz analysis of the African principals who spoke at the general debate using the country list published by the UN shows fewer African presidents attended the general assembly in New York than were at the third summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation that took place in Beijing two weeks earlier in September.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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