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Communications tech biggest catalyst for ICT in Africa – Gartner
Speaking to ITWeb Africa ahead of the Gartner Symposium scheduled for September in Cape Town, principal research analyst William Hahn said Gartner's 2017 Hype Cycle for ICT in Africa confirms that communication technologies are setting the ICT agenda for the region.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Cycling to success: A road to empowerment for rural girls in India
India has a long way to go to ensure that every girl has the opportunity to complete secondary school. Fortunately, simple interventions, like the humble bicycle, which can promote accessibility to distant schools, and providing life skills education can increase school retention rates, improve learning outcomes, and reduce early marriages.
- Categories
- Education
- Region
- South Asia
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Rural India Is Recovering From the Cash Ban
India’s micro-finance industry, which provides small loans to entrepreneurs and business owners who have little collateral, was slammed when the government withdrew high-denomination bank notes from circulation late last year in a bid to stamp out corruption.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Report: The Fight for Light: Improving Energy Access through Digital Payments
Digital payments are at the core of the most successful new models for reaching last-mile customers, enabling businesses and governments to link under-served households with essential services.
- Categories
- Energy
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New study examines ecological underpinnings of world’s rural poverty
"The livelihoods of the rural poor are literally consumed by other organisms in complex ecological systems," explained Matthew Bonds, a visiting assistant professor of medicine at Stanford and co-author of the study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. "The environment's influence on poor rural economies makes them fundamentally different from the economies of more developed countries."
- Categories
- Environment
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The Race to Solar-Power Africa
The spread of cell phones in the region has made it possible for residents to pay daily or weekly bills using mobile money, and now the hope is that, just as cell phones bypassed the network of telephone lines, solar panels will enable many rural consumers to bypass the electric grid. From Ghana, I travelled to Ivory Coast, and then to Tanzania, and along the way I encountered a variety of new solar ventures, most of them American-led. Some, such as Ghana’s Black Star Energy, which had electrified Daban, install solar microgrids, small-scale versions of the giant grid Americans are familiar with. Others, such as Off-Grid Electric, in Tanzania and Ivory Coast, market home-based solar systems that run on a panel installed on each individual house.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Innovation Prize for Africa recognizes Lakheni
A South African initiative that uses group buying power to lower food prices for needy communities, using a mobile app, has been nominated for the continental prize.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How Digitizing Agricultural Input Payments in Rural Kenya is Tackling Poverty: The Case of One Acre Fund
Since 2014, OAF has enabled farmers in Kenya to make loan repayments digitally using the mobile money service M-Pesa instead of in cash, increasing economic opportunity and financial inclusion in some of the world’s poorest farming communities.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa