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Why Coffee Farmers are Poor – And How an Innovative Ownership Model Can Help
Joseph Nkandu grew up on a coffee farm in Uganda and knows firsthand how farmers struggle to earn a living. While agriculture dominates Africa's economy, value chains largely exclude farmers from much of the retail value of their produce - a system that keeps many coffee farmers from generating savings and reinvesting to improve their yields. Nkandu founded the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises, where he advocates a "farmer ownership model." That model, he writes, is ready to scale.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
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Blockchain for Agriculture: Improving Supply Chain Efficiency and Access to Finance for Smallholder Farmers
Though blockchain applications in agriculture are still in early stages, they have intriguing potential that merits increased investment and exploration, says Nikki Brand. She discusses several innovative uses of the technology across the agriculture supply chain, and highlights new Stanford University research on the organizations and initiatives that are leveraging blockchain to drive social impact.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Gap Inc. Sets New Goal For Apparel Suppliers To Pay Garment Workers Digitally By 2020
More than 60 percent of Gap Inc.’s supplier factories already provide digital payments methods, such as online transfers to bank accounts or mobile wallets. The new goal will help scale this progress across the company’s global supply chain and positively impact the lives of more than one million garment workers.
- Categories
- Inclusive Fintech
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Press release: Labor Lens Investing: Promising New Investment Tools to Improve Global Supply Chains
Consumer goods are most often produced far from where they are purchased, successively changing hands along complex and sometimes opaque supply chains. Over the years, cases of labor exploitation have been well documented in almost every industry—from agriculture to construction, and apparel to electronics. The International Labour Organization estimates that forced labor generates US$51 billion in illegal profits annually.
- Categories
- Investing
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Helping Low-Income Patients Breathe Easier: Three Solutions to Oxygen Market Failures
For a child with severe pneumonia—and every other patient struggling for breath—access to oxygen is a matter of life or death. And even though oxygen is just as important to hospitals and clinics as electricity and water, market failures stand between oxygen and the people who need it. While medicines and vaccines are its primary focus, the global NGO PATH recently zeroed in on how to improve oxygen supplies in low- and middle-income countries.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Press release: Ulula Raises $1 Million in Seed Funding to Improve Labor Conditions in Global Supply Chains
Ulula, a software and analytics platform that equips companies with tools to monitor human rights risks, announced today it raised $1 million in private seed funding to expand its mobile platform that enables organizations to engage workers directly, in real time, across global supply chains.
- Categories
- Technology
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Can Next-Generation Startups Unite Agritech and Fintech for Farmers in Emerging Markets?
An amalgamation of agritech and fintech solutions could have an incredible impact for the masses, especially populations that work within the agriculture chain. But making these apps and other digital solutions more user-friendly is critical to expanding their usage. Developers may need to borrow the best toolsets from both sectors, writes Sneha Sampath with Unitus Seed Fund.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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