The Road of Change: Circular Economy in the Automotive Industry
To tell you the story of Kaiho Sangyo, I must first give you a short introduction to the circumstances in the very beginning. In 1969, before returning to Kanazawa, my beloved hometown in Japan, I worked at a dismantling company in Tokyo for three years. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Japan has been a world […]
What is a Refugee-Inclusive Business?
We stand #WithRefugees today on World Refugee Day and every other day of the year. A few weeks ago, the International Finance Corporation published a study revealing that the Kakuma refugee camp and surrounding neighborhoods in northern Kenya, one of the largest and long-standing refugee settlements, represents a US$56 million market opportunity. This is eye-opening […]
Exploring Last-Mile Distribution and BoP Marketing
In the second article, introducing you to the experts and topics we’ll be exploring during our Business Fights Poverty, flagship conference in Oxford on 18th July, we introduce you to inclusive distribution, brought to you by BoPInc (& Every1Mobile), Hystra, and Practical Action. Founding members of the Global Distributors Collective (a partnership-based model that acts […]
Why Cash Is a Problem For Businesses Around The Globe
Until very recently, bags of cash were dropped by plane, every 15 days, in remote rural areas of Uganda to pay more than 8,000 workers on tea estate plantations. When the cash arrived, workers waited half a day in line to collect their wages and the company had to deploy nearly a hundred staff members […]
Professionalising African Motorcycle Taxis: From Vitamins to Painkillers
SafeMotos is proud to announce the new version of our smartphone application: what we believe to be the most localized piece of software ever built by an African startup. It’s been a rocky journey though, with many missteps along the way. Our hope is that we can pass on some of the lessons learned at SafeMotos so others […]
Investing In The Energy Transition
Innovators and entrepreneurs are working to speed up the transition towards clean and renewable energy sources, but many of the innovative clean energy projects have trouble raising the finance to turn their ideas into reality. This was the case for ATEC, a social enterprise in Cambodia which has developed appropriate technology to address the health […]
Bringing Business Back Home: Biomass Energy of Sri Lanka
In 2006, my London-based publishing house, Dakini Books, published the critically acclaimed ‘Global Warning – The Last Chance for Change’, Paul Brown’s fact-based book on climate change and its consequences for the planet and humanity. This book gave me phenomenal insight into what to expect in the next 20 years, and more importantly what we need […]
Entrepreneurs Are Changing The World
Entrepreneurship has proven to have a positive impact on today’s global challenges. Each one of us, by developing and using our strengths and skills, are agents of social change. As stated by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, over 43% of the global population pictures themselves starting a business in the next six months. Entrepreneurship is becoming […]
Sweet Dreams Coming True For Syrian Refugees
“Syrians are famous for their sweets,” says Mohamed Said. He and his son-in-law, Emad Mahmoud, are Syrian refugees living in Darashakran Camp, near the city of Erbil in northern Iraq. They make a living selling handmade cakes and baklava – a pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with honey. Said and Mahmoud run Sima’s Sweets, one of […]
Meet the Longlist: Unilever Global Development Award, Supported by Business Fights Poverty
For the fifth year in a row, Business Fights Poverty is partnering with Unilever and Business in the Community on an award that recognises businesses that demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the SDGs Business has a key role to play in helping drive progress on ending poverty and protecting the planet. More […]
From Gender Lens to Inclusive Impact Investment
Defining impact by destination… A significant component of impact investment’s raisson d’etre is the promotion of economic development. But not just any investment qualifies as impact investment by contributing to economic development- an oil rig or a tobacco company can catalyze demonstrable GDP growth and job creation but are rarely classified as impact investments. […]
Helping Refugees Move From Crisis To Resilience and Self-Reliance
It is estimated that, on average, a refugee spends over a decade in exile. This means that many refugee children, who make up more than half the world’s refugees, will spend most of their childhood in exile, jeopardizing their education and access to future economic opportunities. For millions of refugee adults, decades of displacement have […]
Making Payment Acceptance a Driver for Financial Inclusion
Ten years ago, 85 percent of the world’s transactions were in cash and checks, and 2.5 billion people were unbanked. Since then, we’ve all been working hard as an industry to develop technology that will give the unbanked access to the world of digital payments. Mastercard has connected more than 360 million people to formal […]
Sustainability Standards Embrace GIS Technology
The exponential growth in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for sustainability is not surprising. It is a technology that becomes more powerful the more people use it, and it offers the sustainability community a straightforward and universal platform to come together and build on each other’s work. GIS is not new to sustainability […]
How Can Companies Develop Systems That Drive Commercial Innovation With Social Impact?
As a community of individuals convinced of the potential for business to have a positive impact on people and planet, we are very encouraged to see a growing number of inspiring corporate initiatives that put social impact at the heart of commercial innovation. Driven by a growing band of ‘intrapreneurs’ – social entrepreneurs working inside […]
Missed our Skoll World Forum 2018 Ecosystem Event on Corporate Social Innovation?
Corporate social intrapreneurs develop profitable new products, services, or business models that create value for society and their company. But being a social intrapreneur is not easy. The “corporate immune system” tends to fight different or unfamiliar ideas and it can be hard to make a convincing investment case. Despite the challenges, social innovation is […]
Virtual Exchange: Students Collaborate to Tackle Social Enterprise Challenges in the Middle East
“I’ve never worked with people from so far away. M²GATE gave me the opportunity to work with people from another culture. I enjoyed it a lot,” said Ryan Berg, a freshman at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan at the final session of Cohort 1 of the M²GATE program. M²GATE is […]
Success on Every Corner: How Mom-and-Pop Shops Can Drive Growth in Africa
Peter Kimeu had a job working in hotels around Nairobi, Kenya, but his wages weren’t enough to support his family. After looking for an opportunity to improve his earnings, he decided to use his savings to open a duka—a small, neighborhood store selling basic consumer goods. The only problem was that Peter had never run […]
5 Ways Local Markets Help Refugees Rebuild Their Lives
For four years, Uganda’s neighbour, South Sudan, has been at war with itself. This has resulted in two million people having had to flee their country, including one million to Uganda. 80 per cent of these are women and children. They are families who have lost loved ones, their homes, their land and their livelihoods, […]
Affordability – Beyond the Buzzword
Affordability is at the core of much of our work as impact investors – from affordable electricity to housing, food, healthcare, education and many more. Yet ask someone to define what it means, and you may be met with little more than a blank stare. We recently conducted a straw poll of 20 impact investment […]