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Bank of Ghana Begins Overhaul of Microfinance, Rural Banks
Even as public attention remains focused on the fate of Ghana’s universal banking industry, with only a month left to the dead line for recapitalization to a minimum of GHc400 million, the Bank of Ghana is now commencing with its plans to overhaul the country’s micro-finance and rural banking industries.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Four Ways to Support Vulnerable Youth: Key Takeaways from a Six-Year Livelihood Program
The world’s current generation of 1.8 billion young people is the largest in history. But harnessing this demographic dividend has proven difficult, as youth unemployment rates have remained persistently high for the last decade. Save the Children’s recently concluded Youth in Action program was designed to improve the socioeconomic status of 40,000 out-of-school youth in rural Africa. To find out how well it worked, the organization embedded 32 studies into the program. It recently shared the results – and Nikhit D’Sa discusses four lessons from the findings.
- Categories
- Education
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China’s CFPA Microfinance raises $140m in Series C led by The Rise Fund
The latest funding round adds The Rise Fund to CFPA’s list of big-ticket investors, which now include Ant Financial, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, IFC, Sequoia Capital China, High Impact Capital Advisors, and Renda Puhui.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Faster Energy Access Requires Better Data: This ‘Smart Platform’ Aims to Provide It
Despite the Sustainable Development Goals’ ambitious call for universal energy access by 2030, over 2 billion people still lack reliable electricity. Distributed renewable energy technologies could bridge this gap, but most countries suffering from energy poverty have yet to truly embrace them. One solution, say Rebekah Shirley and Monkgogi Otlhogile at Power for All, is for this fast-evolving sector to have more comprehensive and current data. To that end, the organization has built a free, open-access platform that helps users draw meaningful insights about energy access from the latest data. They discuss the platform and its benefits in this post.
- Categories
- Energy
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Press release: Nine new projects focused on financial inclusion to receive more than US $9 million
Lindsay Wallace, Director of Strategy and Learning at the Mastercard Foundation, said: “The aim of the FRP has always been to enable smallholder farmers and poor people living in rural Africa to reach their full potential by supporting new private sector initiatives that provide access to financial services. We’re very happy to see this latest round of selected firms, demonstrating the depth and breadth of ideas and action plans that will do just that.”
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Cracking the Nut: How a Cashew Enterprise Empowers Women in Rural Bali
Each day, East Bali Cashews (EBC) processes about 800 pounds of raw cashews, preparing them for snack production. The Indonesian company was launched about five years ago after a health care volunteer saw the impoverished conditions many agricultural workers face, and it now employs 400. But the statistic that most impresses Nadia Putri, an MBA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, is that more than 80 percent are women. After interning there this summer, Putri details how EBC works to advance women by providing training in everything from English to Excel.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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How to Build an Impact Industry: Four Strategies from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Almost 3 billion people worldwide cook with materials that are inefficient, unsustainable and polluting. Since 2010, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has sought to make clean stoves and fuels commonplace across the developing world, by building an industry that could deliver this vision. Colm Fay and Ted London at the William Davidson Institute share insights from the Alliance's efforts to catalyze this new industry, breaking down four key stages of acceleration and their lessons for other impact-based accelerators.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Building Markets, Building Cohesion: Lessons from Last-Mile Deliveries
In 2016, Myanmar was a nation emerging from decades of conflict and isolation. Kopernik, the UNDP and Mercy Corps responded with a pilot program that utilized technology distribution as an avenue to strengthen social cohesion in the country's remote rural communities. Tomohiro Hamakawa and Vanesha Manuturi of Kopernik share development lessons learned from the program — lessons with the potential to benefit other emerging market communities making a comeback from histories of conflict.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology