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Rise of pan-African banking could raise between $490-$950bn in additional credit for sub-Saharan Africa
To date, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)’s financial sector remains relatively small and underdeveloped. However, African banks have started to expand their footprint across Sub- Saharan Africa. The number of cross border subsidiaries of African banks has almost tripled since 2002 and there are now ten pan-African banks (PABs) with a presence in at least ten SSA countries, and one with a presence in over 30 SSA countries.
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- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Happy Labor Day
America’s celebrating Labor Day today, so NextBillion’s editors are taking a little time off to honor our workers and maybe even go to a parade. Wherever you are, have a wonderful day. Be sure to check back in with us tomorrow for some agricultural content for our September theme.
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Financial inclusion and the right to privacy
While Aadhaar promises to bring improvements in the delivery of services to poor people and under-served communities, it could also facilitate the collection of massive amounts of information, which would expose vulnerable consumers to privacy risks—competing factors that well-crafted legislation can address.
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- South Asia
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The million-dollar social enterprise
Project Everest grew 1000 per cent last year and is on track to grow 250 per cent this year. In calendar 2016 the venture made $1 million in revenue.
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- Asia Pacific
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How Mastercard’s “Data Philanthropy” Program Is Tackling The Global Financial Information Gap
Through its Center for Inclusive Growth, an independent subsidiary of the company launched in 2013 to support financial inclusion in the developing world, Mastercard is experimenting with a new type of philanthropy: data donation. Mastercard is one of the largest payments companies in the world, and Shamina Singh, president of the Center for Inclusive Growth, says that when the Center was founded, it was with a mandate from the company’s board of directors to “think about Mastercard’s assets broadly, and then think about how those assets can be applied for social good.”
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Rural Financial Inclusion: Small Finance Banks Could Pick up Where Public Sector Banks Left Off in India
While the demonetization tsunami sorely hurt the microfinance industry, Bandhan Bank offers a good template for what MFIs can do after acquiring banking licenses.
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- South Asia
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- lending, microfinance
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Financial Inclusion: Have We Been Approaching The Problem All Wrong?
“The lack of trust in financial institutions partly explains the tendency of households to avoid financial products and invest in physical assets such as gold instead,” the report added.
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- South Asia
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Behind Credit Suisse’s foray into microlending to the global poor
In its early days, Grameen Bank put microfinance on the map by making tiny loans to communities of female small-business owners who put social pressure on one another to repay the loans. Microfinance has come a long way since then. Today, data-enabled microloans are made to small-business owners, farmers and consumers all over the world, often through smartphones and loan officers wielding iPads.
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