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 […]
Increasing Access To Energy Through Enterprise
On Saturday, 29th of March, many westerners switched off their lights to celebrate Earth Hour. The Big Ben, Times Square in New York and the Kremlin in Moscow were just a few of the iconic landmarks that joined millions of people who dimmed their lights to raise awareness about saving energy and reducing our carbon […]
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 […]
Persistent Energy Partners Look To Solar Horizon
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part article on Persistent Energy Partners and its first acquisition in Ghana. In part two, we take a closer look at PEP’s first acquisition and its position in the pay-as-you-go solar sector for low-income markets. In some ways, the business model for delivering products and services to […]
KARIBU Solar Power: Making Quality Solar Affordable
From Dream to Reality Initially started by then-banker, Adam Camenzuli, and his friends from York University (Canada) in 2012 our team seeks to address one of the many issues hindering African economic development: kerosene usage. Did you know that over 500 million people across Africa have little to no access to safe sources of light […]
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 […]
GravityLight: Designing for the BoP
Globally, 1.3 billion people do not have access to electricity. Millions more are ‘under-electrified’, with unreliable and sporadic supply. Instead they typically rely on kerosene for lighting. Hazardous, expensive and polluting, there is a real need to replace kerosene with a safer, sustainable and affordable light. GravityLight was born from a challenge by SolarAid to […]
In Defence of Fair Trade
The School of African and Asian Studies – SOAS – has just produced a coruscating critique of fair trade. The research report is based on field work among wage workers on coffee and flower farms in Ethiopia and Uganda. It finds ‘unambiguously’ that Fairtrade has made no positive difference to wage workers. It finds that […]
Working For The Common Good
Fairtrade’s new Workers’ Rights Strategy has thus far focused on increasing the benefits of Fairtrade for workers on large commercial farms. However, we also recognise that many small producer organizations and their members also employ waged workers and that the number of such workers is increasing as a result of the growth of Fairtrade and […]
Announcing the 2014 Design Expo Schedule
We are one week away from the start of the 2014 Design Expo! Running from 9 to 13 June, the Design Expo is an online celebration of products, services and business models transforming the lives of poor people. The Design Expo is a collaboration with iDE UK and is being supported by the UK’s Department […]
Hanging By A Thread: Workers’ Rights And Lives
Campaigning On Workers’ Rights In One Sector Can Bring Important Gains – But In Doing So, We Must Not Ignore The Needs Of Vulnerable Workers In Other Sectors I was working in my room on the fourth floor of a hotel in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s busy capital, when I saw a man hanging by a rope. […]
Social Innovators: Healthy Soil Makes Healthy People
Howard Buffett’s recent book, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, shares two interrelated insights: that a farmer gets to produce around 40 annual harvests in her lifetime, and that living soils play an absolutely essential role in her and future generations’ abilities increase that harvest each year. Will a small farmer in Africa […]
How Can We Strengthen Food Security In South-East Asia?
This week at the World Economic Forum on East Asia, held in the Philippines, the region’s governments and senior leaders will explore ways to accelerate sustainable agricultural growth and achieve food security through market-based multistakeholder initiatives Home to 600 million people, South-East Asia has enjoyed vibrant and fast-paced growth. The member states of the Association […]
Deliver Nutrition Through Agricultural Platforms
Executive Director, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition A roadmap for aligning investment in the agricultural and nutrition sectors in Tanzania has been launched to help businesses prioritize engagement in nutrition. The roadmap, which was developed at the request of the Tanzanian Government and co-developed by GAIN and the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) […]
Announcing the Business Fights Poverty Design Expo 2014
A creative revolution is underway around the design of products and services that transform the lives of poor people. But perhaps the most exciting activity is around combining design innovation with business model innovation, so that social impact can be achieved on a massive scale. With 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty, it is […]
Banking on Africa: Social and Economic Impact
All eyes are on Africa. Over the past decade, the continent has consistently grown faster than the world as a whole. And unlike previous resource-driven booms, this time Africa’s success is built on foundations that should be sustainable for the long term. A new and confident African middle class is emerging, and trade is expanding […]
Creating a Sustainable Brand
We’ve come a long way down this sustainability journey. We’ve moved from making ourselves feel good through our actions to finding ways to benefit society and help the business bottom line. No longer do we just pay farmers a better price help them increase yields but we get the return through a steady supply of […]