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mHealth initiative to curb infant and maternal fatalities in Kenya
In a bid to reduce the glaring rates of child and maternal deaths annually estimated at 6.6 million and 260,000 respectively, Sub Saharan-African states are set to launch a mobile phone text messaging service to educate masses on better health care and nutrition.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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OPIC: Let’s leverage impact investing to make aid funding sustainable
Much of the impact investing field has been driven by public sector actors, which have an important role to play both in the way they deploy their capital and the work that they can do to build the industry.
- Categories
- Environment
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Kenya mobiles step up rivalry
NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenya’s lucrative mobile money transfer market is set for unprecedented competition following the entry of three additional telecoms operators with intention to have a piece of the sector’s billion shillings pie.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zimbabwe’s high interest rates, multiple borrowings and growing debts
Zimbabwe's microfinance institutions (MFIs) doled out $170 million worth of loans to clients in the first quarter of the year with the bulk of the funds going towards domestic consumption.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Incentives to lift mobile money uptake
Airtime can be used as an incentive to drive the uptake and usage of mobile money services in countries where its growth has been sluggish.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The key to a more productive classroom is more recess
More and more US banks are getting out of the money-transfer business, Dealbook notes (paywall). A series of money-laundering scandals, punished by eye-popping fines, has made them cautious: Bank of America, HSBC, Citigroup and JP Morgan have pulled out altogether, while BBVA is reportedly looking to sell off a business unit that handles wire transfers in Latin America.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Fraudulent Mobile Money Transactions by Staff Cost MTN Uganda Billions
Mobile telecoms operator MTN Uganda has a history of losses resulting from internal misappropriation of funds. In a number of cases, former employees — mainly trade developers, mobile money agents and cleaners of contracted cleaning agencies — have faced convictions for defrauding the company.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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What if everything we know about poor countries’ economies is totally wrong?
As China and India continue their fairly rapid paces of economic growth, a greater and greater share of extreme poverty is going to be concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. But if we're going to make progress there, we need to have good numbers about how various economies are faring, how income is distributed within them, and so forth.