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Sloppy Numbers About Poor Households
Affordability – the ratio between price and household income – matters and gets insufficient attention. While there has been a huge effort to sell quality goods and services at a low price point, there's been relatively little effort to understand incomes and spending patterns in poor households.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Financing the Farming of the Future
According to the World Bank, 78 percent of the world’s poor are rural poor, and many of them are farmers. If you are looking for social returns, there are few better places to invest than in agriculture. Yet, we see significant unmet capital needs. At Calvert Foundation is interested in bringing additional capital to grow this important sector and encouraging other private investors to join as well. Fair trade lending has been an important movement in the agriculture sector, and has led to the creation of critical jobs and economic activity. But how can we learn from pioneer investors and encourage capital to address the significant gaps in financing for innovations in the value chains for locally consumed crops?
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
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It Takes a Village to Build a Business – Lessons Learned From a Fintech Accelerator in Mexico
Accion Venture Lab recently teamed with Village Capital and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth to launch its first-ever business accelerator. Its goal was clear: to find and assemble the 12 best early-stage fintech companies in Mexico, and help them take the leap from betas to scalable businesses. Jackie Hyland discusses lessons learned from the experience in this post.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Six Questions for Microfinance’s Biggest ‘Haters’
Since January, when six randomized control trials were published stating that microcredit is not a viable poverty alleviation tool, microfinance has been taking a lot of heat in the media. But though she says the backlash is partially the sector’s own fault, BRAC’s Maria May offers six questions she wishes its loudest critics would consider.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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The Female Factor: Why enrolling more women as mobile money agents can benefit service providers, customers – and the agents themselves
Research has shown that enrolling more female mobile money agents can improve customer service and increase public trust in bank products and brands. It also provides these women with a valuable source of income. That’s why the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women has partnered with FirstBank of Nigeria and the Youth for Technology Foundation to train 2,500 Nigerian women entrepreneurs as Firstmonie agents.
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- Uncategorized
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Too Good to be True?: Is the Global Findex survey overstating growth in financial inclusion?
Since it was published a few weeks ago, the World Bank’s 2014 Global Findex report has made a splash in media around the world. It found that financial inclusion grew from 51 to 62 percent between 2011 and 2014, a shift that represents a total of 700 million people worldwide. But according to Daniel Rozas and David Roodman, there are reasons to be skeptical about this apparently massive growth.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Mobile Money Without Borders: How a new model is transforming the remittance landscape in West Africa
International remittances are a major source of income for people in many developing markets, and Africa is no exception. But Africans pay the highest remittance transaction fees in the world. The industry has been experimenting with a new model that uses mobile money to address this issue. The GSMA shares insights into this model, highlighting results from their recent case study.
- Categories
- Education
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10 Takeaways from the World Bank Forum on Microcredit’s (lack of) Social Impact
"For a researcher working on microcredit, this is kind of a defining moment." That’s how Abhijit Banerjee described the six recent studies on microcredit’s social impact (or lack thereof). NextBillion has compiled 10 takeaways (and 11 tweets) from the research and the sector’s reaction to it, based on the World Bank event.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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