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iHub: Experiencing the Energy at Nairobi’s Innovative ICT Hotspot
iHub currently connects to more than 8,500 members through a weekly newsletter and events that include Start-up Pitch Night, Fireside Chats, and Hack-a-Thons. A tiered membership scheme gives select members daily access to the facility, including the 20MB Internet connection and space for meetings, Internet use, networking, and collaborative projects.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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How the Arab World Can Build a Tech Sector of its Own
Unemployment in MENA is 10.3 percent, according to the International Labor Organization, the highest anywhere in the world. That rate grows to 23.8 percent for those between the ages of 15 and 25. But where should youth turn to look for meaningful jobs? Maybe the same place they turned to stage protests against their governments: online.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Weekly Roundup: Bringing Broadband to the BoP and Other Insights From OMJ’s BoP Week
Like housing, expanding broadband requires close collaboration with public and private stakeholders, and a willingness to build trust across them. Building that trust was part of the mission of the Opportunities for the Majority’s Strategic Partners Dialogue, which brought together government officials, financers, NGOs, and, of course, entrepreneurs to discuss how policy innovation can be a catalyst for market-based solutions to poverty in both broadband and housing.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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In Telemedicine, Often Old Habits Prove Bigger Challenge Than Technology Hurdles
In the rural town of Juvvalapalem, most residents seek the local Rural Medical Practitioners (also known as quacks) when they need medical treatment. This is just one of the challenges we’re dealing with at GloCare, an initiative to provide market-driven quality healthcare solutions to underserved populations through telemedicine.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Will Lower Mobile Money Fees in Kenya, Tanzania be Enough to Stimulate Micropayments?
Many cite the high cost of electronic transfers as a key market barrier to leveraging mobile money platforms and enabling retail payments or other financial services to the poor. (See a previous post on that subject here). But recently, two leading mobile money providers in Kenya and Tanzania lowered their prices for small-value transfers.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Big Idea: Why Hands-On Regulation of Mobile Money Could Be Dangerous
There’s a very simple imperative driving the tariff structure and every other decision that determines access to mobile money: cost recovery. This is more than a cold-hearted calculation by mobile network operators’ accountants. If rural mobile money agents, who generally operate as independent contractors, cannot profit from this role, there will be no rural agents and no mobile money service.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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The Big Idea: Taking Mobile Money Forward
The excitement of mobile money has been dampened by an inability of deployments to take hold outside a handful of successful markets. Driving the enthusiasm forward is the opportunity to bridge the gap between one billion people in emerging markets who have mobile phones but no bank account. On Tuesday, McKinsey & Company released a report “Mobile money: Getting to scale in emerging markets” seeking to cut through this excitement and identify critical success factors for implementation.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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Mobile Money Payments: Why It’s Time to Move From P2P to Me2Me
Mobile money providers should embrace Me2Me systems, that is, easy-to-use commitment savings platforms that help map how people think about their long-term needs and money. In the customer’s mind, each date would be associated with a purpose, such as paying off school fees, rent, farm equipment or other long-term purchases and expenses.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications