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PayGo vs. MFIs: What Works Better for Energy Access Consumer Financing – And Does it Have to Be Either/Or?
Many last-mile customers can’t afford clean energy products without financial solutions to help pay for them. Energy enterprises often meet this need in two different ways: by partnering with microfinance institutions (MFIs) to provide loans to customers, or by offering pay-as-you-go (PayGo) financing options. The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s CleanStart program has supported energy providers using both of these models, and Teresa Le, an energy finance consultant at the program, explores their relative merits and challenges.
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UNICEF Backs Blockchain Projects, Bitmain Shutters Israeli Development Center
The organization, which is the charity effort of the United Nations for children, is reportedly putting $100,000 toward the effort.
- Categories
- Technology
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Press release: Visionary solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals’ funding gap from UNEP FI’s Positive Impact Initiative
This could be game-changing: by making it cheaper to deliver sustainability outcomes, less risky to finance and would stimulate the private sector to create new business solutions that focus on positive impacts.
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World’s first CO2 negative fuel to be presented at the UN Climate Summit
NextFuel is introducing a completely new energy solution to climate change that is CO2 negative, cheap, profitable and massively scalable in the form of a briquette made from elephant grass.
- Categories
- Energy
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Twice as many African presidents made it to China’s Africa summit than to the UN general assembly
A Quartz analysis of the African principals who spoke at the general debate using the country list published by the UN shows fewer African presidents attended the general assembly in New York than were at the third summit of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation that took place in Beijing two weeks earlier in September.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press release: UN reveals global number of girls not in school is increasing
Equal education for girls is an unfulfilled promise for the majority of the poorest families in low-income countries. Around 131 million girls worldwide are still out of school, and for them equality remains elusive. According to the latest UN reports, the number of out of school girls at primary level grew from 32 million in 2015 to 34 million in 2016.
- Categories
- Education
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In Memory Of Kofi Annan: Father Of The Modern Corporate Sustainability Movement
In the sunny afternoon of January 29, 1999, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kofi Annan spoke to hundreds of business executives: “I propose that you, the business leaders…and we the United Nations initiate a Global Compact of shared values and principles, which will give a human face to the global market.”
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UN pushes for cross-border mobile money payments
The move is intended to facilitate interconnectivity between registered mobile money account owners within Kenya and across the continent, totaling 277 million according to a 2017 report.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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