-
Convincing Customers to Buy What’s Best for Them: How Lessons from Clean Cooking Can Increase the Adoption of ‘Merit Goods’
Despite their clear benefits, “merit goods” — products or practices that improve both individual and societal welfare — often struggle to achieve widespread adoption. As Jean-Louis Racine at the Clean Cooking Alliance explains, even when these products and behavior changes offer solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges, traditional marketing approaches often fail to build significant consumer demand for them. He examines the clean cooking sector’s experience in selling cookstoves and fuels to emerging markets customers, highlighting effective strategies that can accelerate consumer uptake of these and other merit goods.
- Categories
- Energy
-
Turning Failure into Fuel: An Emerging Learning Platform Aims to Bring the Hidden Challenges in Humanitarian Energy to Light
The humanitarian energy sector is eager to learn from success. But according to clean cooking and energy access researchers Nazifa Rafa, Tash Perros, Iwona Bisaga and Ronan Ferguson, its failures are usually buried in reports or quietly brushed aside, and there's often a disconnect between what’s documented in impact reports and what practitioners experience on the ground. They argue that this dynamic is unsustainable in a sector with high risks, urgent needs and shrinking funding. In response, they share an emerging solution: the Humanitarian Energy Learning Platform, a centralized, inter-donor learning system designed to highlight what’s going wrong in humanitarian energy access, and how practitioners can systematically learn from it.
- Categories
- Energy
-
70% of Lagos Phones Can’t Access 5G Despite Device Readiness, NCC Report Finds
A new industry report has revealed that Nigeria’s 5G rollout remains far behind device readiness, exposing a deep gap between user potential and network availability in the country’s largest cities.
- Categories
- Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
‘Millions of Avoidable Deaths’: Climate Change Health Harms Reach Unprecedented Levels
Fossil fuel giants like Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron have paused, delayed, or turned back previous commitments to reduce oil and gas production or increase renewable energy investments, while private banks ramped up lending to the fossil fuel sector by nearly 30 percent in 2024, the Lancet Countdown report said.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
- Region
- Global
-
Analysis: The World Bank Group Reorganization: A Retreat from Research Quality?
"In the new model, it appears that the short-term concerns of the World Bank Group’s dealmakers are likely to gain greater influence over analytical and research output, a step back from a “knowledge bank” and towards the model of economist as salesperson all too common at investment banks."
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Investing
- Region
- Global
-
Press Release: Partnership Aims to Advance Clean Energy Innovation in Asia Pacific
Through this initiative, the University of Michigan and WDI will work collaboratively with ADB on a wide range of projects across the Asian region, including in clean energy and e-mobility, climate and health, water, food security, and biodiversity.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Transportation
- Region
- Asia Pacific
-
New IEA Report Lays Out Pathway to Finance Universal Electricity Access in Africa
First-of-its-kind tracking shows investment is rising but remains well below levels needed to close the access gap.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Malengo Secures $12.9 Million from The Shapiro Foundation to Expand International Education Pathways & Financial Security
Malengo is a non-profit organization enabling international educational migration and economic empowerment for young people from East Africa.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.