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How the UN is using cellphones to improve conditions for Boko Haram victims
Since the conflict heightened in 2009, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimates “more than 20,000 people have been killed, and over 2,000 women and girls have been abducted. 2.5 million people have fled their homes, of whom 2.2 million are internally displaced, and 177,000 are seeking refuge in the neighbouring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.”
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Serve Rural Areas or Lose License, Central Bank of Nepal Governor Tells Microfinance Institutions
Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) Governor Chiranjibi Nepal has warned that the central bank may scrap the license of microfinance institutions who fail to reach rural areas of the country.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Sierra Leone Solar Push Aims to Bring Electricity to All by 2025
Sierra Leone aims to provide electricity to all of its 6 million citizens by 2025 in a push to boost the economy, expand crucial services such as healthcare, and reduce dependency on aid, officials said on Wednesday.
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- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity Announces Winners of 2015 Scaling Competition and Launches 2016 Competition
The MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity today awarded five companies more than US$10.6 million to bolster their innovative work to alleviate poverty by increasing access to financial services for poor people in rural Africa. The five companies introduced imaginative thinking in their approach to scaling up financial inclusion – the increase in access to services such as mobile banking, savings accounts, insurance and credit – for the benefit of nearly eight million people in remote parts of Africa.
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- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NexThought Monday – What Uber and Airbnb Can Teach Us About Global Development
The sharing economy isn't built on apps or smartphones. Its foundation is something far less high tech: paper. Specifically, legal papers related to property such as deeds, titles, leases and the institutions that uphold them. But those documents, and the rights that go with them, are far too scarce for the poor. How some countries are transforming their property rights and land tenure systems, and why the development community should take notice.
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- Uncategorized
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Where Ideas for Social Enterprise Take Wing
A graduate from Oxford University, Manas Nanda's dream was to make a social change. He found his way back to his roots by starting 'Harvest Wild', a social enterprise, with an aim to create livelihood opportunities for people living in remote forest areas in India. It was at IIM-Bangalore's incubation cell, NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), where his idea of bubble nut wash was mentored.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Leaping Into the Future: Nigeria’s Rural Microfinance Community Gets Connected Using Stellar and Oradian
In the 1970s, microfinance began to take off as people started extending credit to small businesses and farmers as a way of getting them out of poverty. Microfinance works: the only problem is it's hard to scale; it's time-consuming and expensive to disburse and collect loans for instance. People are not able to transfer money within the country because they can't get normal bank accounts or afford to pay 20% for traditional remittance/money transfers.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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IFC Lends P700 Million to Two Philippines Financial Institutions for MSME Financing
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will provide a seven-year loan to CARD Bank, Inc. and CARD SME Bank, Inc. to benefit micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), microfinance borrowers, and women in rural areas.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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