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The Catch-22 in Global Health Finance: Why Medical Oxygen is the Test Case for Turning Aid into Investment
By most measures, medical oxygen in sub-Saharan Africa isn’t an investable market. As Alex Losneanu and Jason Houdek at Oxygen CoLab explain, providing medical oxygen is capital-intensive and operationally demanding. That means small- and medium-sized oxygen suppliers typically stall out or get absorbed into grant-funded programs instead of becoming commercially viable, and funders conclude that these SMEs are too fragile to justify the investment risk. They argue that this conclusion is wrong, and also self-fulfilling, reinforcing a Catch-22 that exists across global health. They share findings from a supplier mapping project that show how emerging business models are enabling oxygen SMEs to scale, and propose three shifts in how catalytic capital can be designed to support these and other businesses across the global health sector.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
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Interpol Report Finds AI Linked to More Than Half of Cybercrime in Africa
The 40-page report draws on survey data from 36 African member countries and highlights a defining shift: cyber-criminality has evolved from isolated incidents into an industrialized, borderless ecosystem.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Small Steps Taken Towards Greater Gender Diversity in African Startup Ecosystem in Last 2 Years, Says New Report
The report was released in partnership with industry stakeholders, led by Madica, an Africa-focused pre-seed investment programme dedicated to empowering underrepresented and underfunded mission-driven founders.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: Increasing Our 2026 Allocation to GiveWell’s Recommendations to $1 Billion
Via Coefficient Giving: "This $1 billion will nearly double the cumulative funding we have previously committed to GiveWell’s recommendations over the last decade. Based on GiveWell’s estimates, we believe that funding has saved over 100,000 lives."
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: Smart Freight Centre and Shell Foundation Launch Report on Inclusive EV Financing for India’s Freight Drivers
The study of 1,500+ freight drivers across 11 states highlights pathways to improve livelihoods while accelerating freight decarbonization in India.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Transportation
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Rize Secures $31 Million Series B to Expand Low-Emission Rice Network in Vietnam and Indonesia
Rize works with farmers to adopt Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), an irrigation technique endorsed by the International Rice Research Institute and CGIAR that periodically drains paddies rather than keeping them permanently flooded.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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Healthy Diet Too Expensive for One in Three People Globally, UN Report Finds
Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Global
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Making Waste Pay: The Keys to Sustaining Paying Customers in Solid Waste Management
Despite growing discourse around the revenue potential of waste to wealth — i.e., reimagining waste as a valuable resource — profitability in municipal solid waste management remains low in India and other low- and middle-income countries. As Vishwanath Varma, Archana Masih, Diksha Rana and Ashish Kapil at Waste Warriors Society argue, this challenge has led to a growing focus on collecting user fees from households — yet that goal is easier said than done. They share analysis based on Waste Warriors Society’s user fee records and customer surveys, which reveals key insights on how to retain paying customers in solid waste management and other user fee-based models of social entrepreneurship.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, WASH
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