How Financial Innovation In LatAm Is Securing Housing For The BOP
I’m intrigued by FOMEPADE, a rising star in Mexico’s financial scene. Conceived by microfinance veteran Juan José Gutiérrez Chapa (a founding partner of Banco Compartamos) to provide quality housing to underserved markets, FOMEPADE launched in 2012 a housing loan program that incorporates housing providers into a unique value chain for the families at the base […]
How Do You Sell KnowledgeTo Smallholder Farmers?
iDE has over 30 years of experience working with smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a result we know two things: If smallholders are to transition from subsistence farming to the production of high-value fruits and vegetables for the market they need access to low cost agricultural technologies, such as a drip […]
Fighting Malnutrition With Improved Complementary Foods For Infants
As of 2014, malnutrition remains a widespread issue across the globe. Families living at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) spend an average of 60% of their income on food, and yet, undernutrition still accounts for over 3m deaths per year among infants and young children. 26% of all under-five children are stunted, irremediably reducing […]
Mobile Money For The Unbanked
The State of Mobile Money Product Offering – What do people use mobile money for? In an article published earlier this month, we discussed the level of mobile money usage and calculated that on a monthly basis, around 54m people were making transactions globally. But what do people use mobile money for? Which products are […]
Leveraging Technology To Boost Agricultural Development
The share of agriculture and allied sectors in India’s GDP is 13.7% (2012-13); providing livelihood to nearly 600 million Indians. The decrease in the share of Agricultural and Allied Sectors in GDP of the country in comparison to other sectors is on account of structural changes due to a shift from a traditional agrarian economy […]
The Importance Of Design Aesthetics On Products Designed To Fight Poverty
Over recent years it has been recognised that business can help alleviate poverty, by providing income generating products and services to many living at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The advance of Design for the other 90% and other recent initiatives such as Human Centred Design and the recognition of Design Thinking have generated […]
Three Things You Don’t Know About Broadband
In the past year MIT and NASA have been working hard at setting up broadband connectivity in the moon. The results have been so positive, that you can actually have better connectivity in the moon that in many countries on earth, including the United States. At the same time Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, created […]
Designing Behavior And The Importance Of Being Multi-Channel
We spend a lot of time talking about the ubiquity of the mobile phone at FrontlineSMS. So much time, in fact, that we’ve now forbidden the use of the word in the office. It’s not the word’s fault, though, that it’s been so difficult to get an accurate idea of exactly how many people, how […]
Moving Beyond M-Pesa: Innovations In Financial Inclusion
Everyone has now heard about the success of M-Pesa in Kenya. With over 11.6 million active users, 79,000 agent outlets, and $1.1 billion in real time payments each month, M-Pesa has been a game changer in the quest for ubiquitous financial inclusion. M-Pesa has been so successful that mobile network operators (MNOs) have rolled out […]
A Tale of Tradition, Technology & Tobacco
Ethnic communities living in remote areas are not only geographically isolated, they are technologically isolated too – that’s what I thought while going to the hilly part of Bangladesh lately. And I was wrong! I was visiting Bolipara – a remote place in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southern Bangladesh, a region famous for […]
A Tale of Tradition, Technology & Tobacco
Ethnic communities living in remote areas are not only geographically isolated, they are technologically isolated too – that’s what I thought while going to the hilly part of Bangladesh lately. And I was wrong! I was visiting Bolipara – a remote place in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southern Bangladesh, a region famous for […]
Twitter Jam: Designing for the BoP – On Storify
What’s A Foundation-Owned Social Enterprise, And How Can It Help Solve Market Failure
My organization, Gradian Health Systems, uses an atypical business model to get our product into the hands of those who could benefit from it. We produce a unique medical device, the Universal Anaesthesia Machine (UAM), which is designed to provide anesthesia in any environment – including infrastructure-poor hospitals that lack consistent access to electricity or […]
Innovations In Privately Delivered MNCH Care: Exploring The Evidence Behind Emerging Practices
This analysis is excerpted froma research brief produced by the T-HOPE Group at the University of Toronto in partnership with CHMI. Organizations are using innovative delivery and financing approaches to improve access to quality healthcare for mothers and children – through private sector mechanisms. Of the 45 million home births that occur annually, the majority […]
State Support For Private Sector Innovations: A Deep-Dive Into The Philippines
The Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) profiles more than 1,200 programs that engage the private sector in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). CHMI works through Regional Partners around the world to identify programs using innovative delivery and financing mechanisms to improve access to high quality, affordable healthcare for vulnerable communities. Our partners at the […]
Opening Up Innovation To Defeat Diseases Of Poverty
Defeating disease can not only help people live healthier lives, but more prosperous lives too. You need only look at deworming to see this. Intestinal worms cause anaemia, stunting and malnutrition among children living in developing countries. But effective treatment can have a profound effect. A study in Kenya showed that children treated for intestinal […]
GRADIAN I: Spinning Out A Commercial Entity From A Nonprofit Foundation
A healthcare provider in Malawi delivers anesthesia using Gradian’s UAM Globally, 2 to 3 billion people lack access to adequate surgical care.1 Of the more than 230 million major surgical procedures performed worldwide each year, patients in low- expenditure countries receive just 3.5 percent of the total, even though they account for 34.8 percent of […]
Who Are The Innovators?
Innovation is alive and well among entrepreneurs – but not so much where you’d expect. Take Silicon Valley, for example – a place long considered virtually synonymous with innovation. Twelve companies originating from that hotbed of invention during the past decade have achieved market valuations of $1 billion or more, presumably marking them as the […]
Living Goods: Improving Health, Improving Incomes
Mary is a typical mother living in a rural Ugandan village. She has two options when one of her four children falls sick. Her first and allegedly cheapest option is walking long distances to a public facility, where she will spend hours waiting in the heat and in many cases find that free treatments are […]
Design Expo 2014 – Google Hangout Video – The Business Model Behind the Bright Idea
