Category: Technology

Technology

2 Billion People Can’t See Clearly. This Business Sees the Answer.

What if I told you we had a breakthrough solution that could access untapped potential in 2.5 billion people? That it could keep people safer and help children learn better? You might envision a fancy new technology, but this magic bullet is surprisingly simple: a pair of eyeglasses. Just this month, Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Target […]

Power Sector Reforms Spur Private-Sector Participation

Image above: Ivy Namasani makes a dress in her tailoring shop in downtown Blantyre, Malawi. Her store suffers from frequent power blackouts that hamper her ability to do business. As part of the Malawi Compact, MCC is supporting the Government of Malawi in its efforts to strengthen the country’s power sector and deliver reliable electricity […]

Want to Change the World? Allow the Private Sector to Do What it Does Best

For the past week, the world has watched as heads of state and global business leaders convened in New York City for the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. The agenda was far from light. Topics ranged from food security to climate change to the refugee crisis to healthcare. The task at hand – achieving the […]

Last Mile Financial Inclusion: What Will It Take to Reach More Rural Women?

Digital services – with their geographic reach, ease of use, and transparency – are driving financial inclusion and alleviating poverty. But are rural women being left behind? Financial inclusion is unlocking the potential for micro and small enterprises in poor and rural communities to grow, and reducing gender inequalities. Women with access to financial services […]

System Leadership in Practice: Technoserve’s East Africa Coffee Initiative

Read enough blogs, and you might think the formula for increasing smallholder farmers’ incomes is well-known: training + access to (inputs x finance x markets). Simple, right? From 2008-2015, TechnoServe’s East Africa Coffee Initiative reached more than 250,000 farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, increasing their incomes by more than 25%. A new report […]

From Digital Divide to Inclusion: How to Make Digital Finance Work for India’s Women

Often heralded as a panacea for financial inclusion, digital financial services could exacerbate the gender divide, unless there is a concerted effort to develop women-friendly products and channels. Despite recent successes in India’s financial inclusion journey, Indian women still cannot access bank accounts, loans, and other financial services as easily as men. In 2015, only […]

New Report: Enabling Smallholder Farmers to Improve Their Incomes

By David Norman, Challenge Director, Business Fights Poverty Many global companies buy significant amounts of the crops they need from smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They may source either directly from smallholders or indirectly, through traders. Companies choose to work with smallholder farmers for many reasons. Smallholders are often the main producers […]

Supporting Corporate Social Innovation to Bring Mobile Services to Smallholder Farmers

Interview with Tegan Palmer, Business Intelligence Manager, mAgri program, GSMA. Q: Tegan, you are the Business Intelligence Manager at the mAgri program at GSMA. What does the mAgri program do? A: We catalyze scalable, commercial mobile services that improve the productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers and benefit the agriculture sector in emerging markets. We […]

Using Customer Data to Crack the Last-mile Distribution Challenge

You can’t manage what you don’t know. While we’d probably all subscribe to that maxim, it’s one that rings especially true for organizations seeking to serve the more than four billion low-income people living at the base of the pyramid (BoP). BoP markets have long been heralded for their potential to drive economic growth and […]

Rethinking Collaboration: Research Perspectives

On July 10 and 11, over 300 people came together for our annual flagship event, Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2017 at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The headline sponsor for the event was Mars Inc. It was held in association with the Center for Business and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin Madison and […]

Scaling Inclusive Business Models at the Nexus of Poverty and Environment

Scaling Inclusive Business Models at the Nexus of Poverty And Environment: Case Studies from the Philippines To date, many actors involved in poverty alleviation and environmental protection have operated in silos. Although both sectors follow ecosystem approaches, in the first, impact is seen as positive and desirable, and in the latter, impact is seen as […]

Shining a Bright Light on the Role of Digital Payments in Expanding Energy for All

In an age of evolving technology and development, there may be an extraordinary disconnect in addressing the problem of energy access. Consider Vivian who lives in the Western Region of Ghana, about an hour’s drive north of Takoradi. She has a farm but most of her income is derived from buying and selling cooking oil. […]

Unlocking Private Sector Investment to Deliver the SDGs in Challenging Places

There is an estimated $2.5 trillion financing gap needed to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Should the gap not be filled, it is possible that we will fail in the attempt to realise the global ambition to “end poverty and hunger, and achieve sustainable development”. The debate around the most effective models for […]

Can Technology Make Africa Happy?

The phenomenal growth of mobile technology in Africa with apps such as M-Pesa and Eco-Cash has made banking possible even for my 91-year-old grandmother, who lives in a Zimbabwean village. This grassroots approach to innovation has opened up tailored and useful apps to mobile phone users across the African continent. My grandmother now even has […]

Emerging Trends in Digital Delivery of Agri-finance

This is the first in a series of three blogs on the role of technology in the rural finance projects supported by The MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP). In this first blog, we explore the major trends in digital delivery that the Fund is seeing in its portfolio. In the second blog, we […]

Building Efficiency for Farmers in Kenya – Replacing Cash with Digital Repayments

The shift to digital payments has enormous potential for eliminating rural poverty. Success stories from places like Kenya show that potential can turn into real-life impact, as mobile payments help to boost productivity for smallholder farmers. Just this week, a new case study by the United Nations-based Better Than Cash Alliance presents how the agriculture […]

The UPS International Disaster Relief and Resilience Award – Meet the Shortlist

The frequency, intensity and complexity of disasters will increase over the coming decades. Globalisation means the impacts of those disasters on business and communities are increasingly evident, and businesses are being called upon to scale up their response to such events by internal and external stakeholders. Through their actions, businesses have demonstrated that business and […]