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Moving Beyond Grants: How NGOs Can Diversify Toward Earned Revenue, and How Funders Can Support That Transition
The development sector has reached an increasingly firm consensus that it needs to depend less on grants as the aid landscape evolves, and strategies to generate earned revenue have emerged as a key solution for NGOs seeking to remain financially sustainable. But as Toon Driesen at the Enabel Innovation Hub and Alex Losneanu and Pritika Kasliwal at Brink explain, commercializing innovative solutions to complex societal issues typically costs money before it makes money, and early funding support often falls away before a business model can scale. They share research that reveals what NGOs must do differently to execute the transition to an earned revenue model, and explore how funders can help them implement these changes.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Mastercard Launches Wallet Pay to Scale Digital Wallets Worldwide
Harnessing the industry’s most advanced capabilities, Mastercard Wallet Pay solutions empower wallet providers to deliver frictionless experiences — from everyday spending to cross-border transfers – meeting the demands of a rapidly expanding digital economy.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Financing AI Transformation in LMICs: What Multilateral Development Banks Must Do Differently
Multilateral development banks have spent the last decade building the foundations of digital economies across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the broadband networks, digital ID systems and other priorities they've financed are helping to make AI deployments in these markets possible. But as Kunal Walia at Dalberg Advisors explains, this funding often goes toward piloting individual use cases, expanding digital infrastructure or creating an enabling environment, rather than uniting these different components into holistic AI systems that aim to scale. He argues that multilateral development banks must rethink their approach to ensure that the infrastructure they've helped build can actually enable AI transformation.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
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Nigeria Launches an Ambitious National Digital Cloud Policy
The final phase will involve scaling government migration, expanding infrastructure, onboarding participating states, strengthening regional interconnection and increasing digital service exports.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa50 Secures $50 Million to Boost Early-Stage Investment for Climate-Resilient Projects
Africa50 is a specialist investor in African infrastructure – developing, de-risking and delivering projects to unlock economic growth across the continent.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Beanstalk AgTech Announces the Launch of Monsoon Ventures to Accelerate Agtech Commercialisation in Southeast Asia
The studio will invest capital, recruit complementary commercial expertise, map value chain pathways, and help ventures attract the right investors or strategic partnerships with regional players.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Analysis: Why EV Infrastructure, Not Vehicles, Will Determine Africa’s Mobility Transition
In many emerging electric mobility markets, the question is no longer whether riders are willing to adopt EVs. It is whether the broader infrastructure ecosystem, including charging, swapping, grid capacity, and financing, can scale quickly enough to keep pace.
- Categories
- Energy, Transportation
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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ADB and Partners Power Timor-Leste’s Energy Future with Landmark Investment in Solar and Battery Storage
The landmark investment—which is also Timor-Leste’s first independent power producer project —will be operated by Manatuto Renewables Power and will help to transform the country’s energy landscape by reducing reliance on imported diesel.
- Region
- South Asia
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