A Guide To Working With Informal Financial Institutions
Amid the growing interest in building effective and scalable solutions to meet the financing needs of the world’s 450 million smallholder farmers, organizations rarely pay much attention to the thousands of informal financial institutions that can be found in rural communities throughout the world. Instead, discussions on ways to close the estimated $400 billion gap […]
Seeking Innovative Ideas to Improve Eye Health Globally
Do you have an innovative idea that could improve eye health worldwide? The deadline for applications for the eXcellence in Ophthalmology Vision Award (XOVA) 2014 (www.xovaprogram.org) is 30 June 2014. The XOVA is a scheme, sponsored by Alcon and Novartis Pharmaceuticals, that provides funding to support initiatives aiming to address unmet needs in eye care. […]
Taking The “Product” Out Of Product Design
Social entrepreneurs are driven by passion. We are people who have bold ideas to solve huge challenges, and have almost singular vision to the execution of our idea. Our products are our babies- we know every dimension, every line of code, or every component because we have spent many long evenings debugging, tinkering, sketching, and […]
Creating Access to Safe Drinking Water
Access to safe drinking water is a significant problem globally, with over 784 million people worldwide lacking access[1]. Waterborne disease is a leading cause of illness in developing countries, contributing to the death of approximately two million children every year. Sub Saharan Africa is the worst affected region, where 40% of the population is still […]
Maximising Impact through Co-Creation
Over 70% of Tanzania’s population, or 35 million people, lives in rural areas and faces daily problems, from water availability to lack of electricity, that could be alleviated with appropriate technology solutions; however, most technologies are designed and manufactured abroad and fail to truly address the needs of rural Tanzania for 3 main reasons: These […]
Delivering Cutting Edge Micro-Irrigation Technologies
I’m excited to share with you an inspiring private/ non-profit collaboration between Toro Irrigation, a US-based world leader in irrigation equipment design and manufacturing and International Development Enterprises, an international non-profit organisation with over 30 years of experience developing markets for agriculture products and services that benefit smallholder farmers. Through the partnership, an innovative drip […]
Improving Economic Conditions For Smallholder Farmers
Xylem’s Saajhi Stepping Pump was created to significantly enhance the daily operations of rural smallholder farmers across the globe. The Saajhi pump features self-priming diaphragm technology, small overall dimensions, a tilt and transport design, and simplified maintenance to ensure efficient use for all farmers. The design not only makes Saajhi easy to use but also […]
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 […]
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 […]
How Selling Energy as a Service meets The Poor's Needs
Rather than trying to sell energy products with high up-front costs, innovative businesses are selling energy services A good starting point for a business is usually to target customers with money, and in places that are easy to reach. So it might not seem an obvious business opportunity to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion […]
How Selling Energy as a Service meets The Poor’s Needs
Rather than trying to sell energy products with high up-front costs, innovative businesses are selling energy services A good starting point for a business is usually to target customers with money, and in places that are easy to reach. So it might not seem an obvious business opportunity to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion […]
The Sun Is Shining On West Africa And Solar Microgrids
Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part article on Persistent Energy Partners (PEP) and its first acquisition in Ghana. In part one, Christopher Aidun, PEP’s managing partner, discussed the strategy behind the fund (formerly E+Co) and its focus on off-grid solar technologies. In this post, we take a closer look at PEP’s first […]
Making Bluetooth Work For Rural Low-Income Families
By Vincenzo Capogna, Innovation Manager, SunnyMoney SunnyMoney is a social enterprise founded by London-based charity SolarAid and we are the largest seller of pico-solar lights in Africa. A pico-solar light is a compact portable device that uses a photovoltaic panel to produce up to 10watts of power. Combined with advanced batteries and LED bulbs it […]
Private Schools are Bridging Crucial Gaps for the Poor
When Mohammed Khan, a local businessman in the Indian city of Hyderabad, read in his newspaper that there was an entire neighbourhood of professional beggars with no access to school, he resolved to build one. Not only that, he managed to persuade the parents that classes for their children were worth paying for. Charging as […]