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Scaling Without Breaking: A Practical Tool for Strengthening Health-Focused Digital Wholesalers in LMICs
Patients across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often use private providers for healthcare products and services, making these frontline settings a valuable pathway for increasing the availability of quality medicines and improving health outcomes in these markets. François Lepicard, Alice Magand and Guillaume Massot at Hystra, and Laura Collet at Sanofi share learnings from the Sanofi Impact Fund, supported by the Hystra team, which invests in digitally enabled wholesalers that help stock last-mile providers with medicines and other health products. They highlight the common challenges these businesses are facing, exploring how funders can help overcome them, and sharing a tool that outlines key priorities and performance targets across the digital wholesaler business model in the health sector.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
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NADF, German Firm Partner on Climate-Resilient Agricultural Finance
"The partnership is also expected to support the development of new or improved financial products for smallholder farmers, particularly those designed around the growing risks posed by climate change to agricultural production."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Moving Beyond Grants: How NGOs Can Diversify Toward Earned Revenue, and How Funders Can Support That Transition
The development sector has reached an increasingly firm consensus that it needs to depend less on grants as the aid landscape evolves, and strategies to generate earned revenue have emerged as a key solution for NGOs seeking to remain financially sustainable. But as Toon Driesen at the Enabel Innovation Hub and Alex Losneanu and Pritika Kasliwal at Brink explain, commercializing innovative solutions to complex societal issues typically costs money before it makes money, and early funding support often falls away before a business model can scale. They share research that reveals what NGOs must do differently to execute the transition to an earned revenue model, and explore how funders can help them implement these changes.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Analysis: The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical.
The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. Right now, we are not preparing adequately for that transition. If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Global
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AI’s Impact on the Environment Is Absolutely Horrifying, New Paper Finds
It’s reached the point that AI is giving the fossil fuel industry a substantial leg up, as a new paper published in the journal NPJ Climate Action details.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
- Region
- Global
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An Important Update on ANDE’s Future and Sunsetting Operations
Danielle Baussan, Interim Executive Vice President for Policy Programs at the Aspen Institute has made the difficult decision to wind down ANDE’s operations and sunset the network by November 2026.
- Categories
- Education, Energy, Finance, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Almost Half of World’s Farmers Poisoned by Pesticides Every Year, Experts Find
Study reveals that pesticide poisoning kills 11,000 people each year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of fatalities.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Global
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Analysis: Why AI Carbon Footprinting Tools are Prone to Misleading Results
"The automation of the normally tedious process of creating product carbon footprints (PCFs) is one of the more tantalizing sustainability applications of artificial intelligence. But users of these services should treat the results with caution, suggests a study from researchers at Watershed, a carbon accounting platform."
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Technology
- Region
- Global
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