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Finance Responds to Climate Change: How ‘Recovery Lending’ Can Help Victims of Weather-Related Disasters
Natural disasters leave U.S. communities reeling – but those impacted generally have an insurance safety net. When climate-related catastrophes strike poorer populations, it is almost impossible to recover fully. In fact, every year natural disasters force 26 million people further into poverty. Stewart McCulloch of VisionFund International details a novel disaster insurance program that leverages big data climate models to support nearly 700,000 families with "recovery lending."
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Mercy Corps and Mastercard Foundation take Fintech to Farmers
Humanitarian agency Mercy Corps is partnering with Mastercard Foundation to push for adoption of technology to benefit millions of small-scale Kenyan farmers for better food production and ending perennial shortages.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Mercy Corps and Mastercard Take Fintech to Farmers
Humanitarian agency Mercy Corps is partnering with Mastercard Foundation to push for adoption of technology to benefit millions of small-scale Kenyan farmers for better food production and ending perennial shortages.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Crowdfunded Farming: Connecting Investors with Smallholders in Indonesia
Despite the importance of agriculture in Indonesia's economy, smallholder farmers are 2.3 times poorer than the general population – and they have little access to formal financing that could boost their production and income. Because of this, many fall prey to loan sharks and go into debt. To address this vicious cycle, the crowdfunding platform Crowde is helping smallholders connect with investors, who help finance their farms in exchange for profit-sharing. Heri Siswanto discusses the successes – and challenges – of this approach.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Technology
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How microcredit can help poor countries after natural disasters
BOTH, in different ways, worry about liquidity. And global warming may, indeed, be bringing meteorologists and financiers together. On January 18th, VisionFund, a microlending charity, and Global Parametrics, a venture that crunches climate and seismic data, launched what they billed as the “world’s largest non-governmental climate-insurance programme”. The scheme will offer microfinance to about 4m people across six countries in Asia and Africa affected by climate-change-related calamities.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Press release: MIX and One Acre Fund Launch Smallholder Finance Product Explorer
MIX and One Acre Fund announced the launch of the Smallholder Finance Product Explorer, a new, centralized directory where the agricultural finance industry can, for the first time, access detailed information on existing smallholder finance products. The goal of this new resource, which is available through the popular MIX Market platform, is to make accessible operationally useful information in order to inspire the development of new financial products for smallholder farmers and improve existing ones.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Press release: Largest Non-Governmental Climate Insurance Program Launches for African & Asian Smallholder Farmers
Over 690,000 families totalling up to four million people living in six low-income countries stand to benefit from a new climate insurance programme launched today by VisionFund International, World Vision’s microfinance arm and Global Parametrics, a new venture funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and by the InsuResilience Investment Fund, set up by German development bank KfW and managed by Swiss-based impact investment manager BlueOrchard Finance. Financing for the initial preparation and assessment required to implement the programme came from the Rockefeller Foundation and FMO, the Dutch development bank.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Announcing the Most Influential NextBillion Posts of 2017
As we welcome 2018, we'd like to pay a final tribute to the top posts of 2017. In their own way, each of these insightful pieces introduced a novel concept, approach or argument that captured our readers' attention – and in some cases, provoked their ire. Here are the winners of 2017's Most Influential Post Contest.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Finance, Investing
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