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Viewpoint: Cloud Computing Could Be Key to Speeding up Africa’s Development
What’s especially useful about cloud computing is that companies or organisations don’t need to own computing infrastructure or data centres. Instead, they can rent access to storage and applications, among other things, from a cloud service provider. This allows them to get access to sophisticated capabilities on demand. And they don’t have to spend a great deal of money building and maintaining IT infrastructure on site.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- data, global development, SDGs
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Press Release: Initiative for Blended Finance Launches to Make Sustainable Development More Effective
University of Zurich unites with leading research, knowledge and practice partners to provide excellent, practice-driven research & education for a more powerful collaboration between public & philanthropic funders and private investors.
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
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The Planetary Potential of Banishing Kerosene Lighting – And How Entrepreneurship Can Help
Kerosene lamps are still used by hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. They contribute to climate change by releasing not only CO2 but also black carbon, an especially potent greenhouse gas. What's more, they exact a grim human toll, from burns and fires to toxic smoke and poisoning hazards. Alicia Oberholzer and Fid Thompson at Solar Sister call for an end to kerosene lighting, and highlight how women's entrepreneurship can make it happen.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Clean vs. ‘Clean Enough’: How the Clean Cooking Industry Can Overcome its Struggles to Scale
Access to clean cookstoves and fuels has only increased by 0.5% per year, well below all global development goals. To turn this trajectory around, Jessica Alderman at Envirofit International argues that the industry needs to resolve a high-stakes debate: Should it focus only on the cleanest solutions that have the greatest health and environmental impacts? Or should it fund and promote technologies that have lesser impacts - but that are more affordable and likelier to reach the people who need them most?
- Categories
- Energy, Health Care, Technology
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UNDP and Samsung Unveil Global Goals Partnership
Samsung Galaxy phones will carry the Global Goals app that defines each of the 17 goals showing users how they can take small actions towards achieving the SDGs.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- global development, SDGs
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Think Big: Behind a Push to Unlock Billions in New “Catalytic” Capital for Global Development
The Global Impact Investing Network’s (GIIN) 2018 Impact Investor Survey shows a diverse and growing market. But the survey also finds a “particularly” wide gap in “appropriate capital across the risk/return spectrum.” Of the $288 billion in impact investment assets today, only 5 percent are allocated below market.
- Categories
- Investing
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Viewpoint: How Philanthropy Can Help Impact Investing Reach Its Potential
To be sure, catalytic capital is not for all investors. Rather, it is one of a range of financial tools needed to supplement traditional grant making and conventional investing. But catalytic capital must be part of the solution if we are to address the Sustainable Development Goals’ massive funding gap, which is estimated at $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
- Categories
- Investing
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Solar Water Pumps Have Been Around Since the 1970s: Here’s Why They Haven’t Scaled
Solar water pumps, which have been around for years, are becoming far more affordable thanks to declining solar panel prices and new business models – particularly for the roughly 500 million smallholder farmers worldwide. So why isn’t the industry taking off? Makena Ireri and Jenny Corry Smith of CLASP, a group of 14 donor organizations working to scale markets and reduce the prices of off-grid technologies, present several reasons. They explore solutions for making solar irrigation systems a priority in the off-grid conversation.
- Categories
- Energy
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