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NexThought Monday: How Innovative Financing Mechanisms Are Helping Afghanistan’s Farmers
It’s not easy to improve farmers’ livelihoods in any developing country. Add in ongoing violence, feeble institutions, and some of the lowest living standards in the world, and the task can seem nearly impossible. But in August 2010, a project team from DAI landed in Afghanistan to do just that—by implementing USAID’s Agricultural Credit Enhancement (ACE) program, which aimed to lend $100 million to farmers and agribusinesses to invest in agriculture across the country.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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Weekly Roundup: A Look at the Recent Impact Investing Conversation (Cacophony)
Impact investing’s presence in the news and online discussions seemed to grow exponentially this week and last week. Here are just a few stories that breathed optimism into the impact investing field by speaking to the associated markets crossed our desks.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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First Fund to Help Smallholder Farmers with Long-Term Loans
Incofin Investment Management, Fairtrade International (FLO) and Grameen Foundation will establish a ‘First Fund’ to focus on the unmet demand of smallholder farmers for long-term loans.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
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Re-imagining Capitalism: Accounting for Externalities
At the Sankalp Summit 2012 last week in Mumbai, the opening plenary, “Reimaging Capitalism” set the tone for the following two days. The panel talked about the need to ‘reimagine’ capitalism, pushing us to conjure up creative definitions of how markets function and what they can do. What would it take to imagine markets being used as more than just a money-making tool?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Rethinking the Role of Capital Markets in Enabling Social Progress
Earlier this week at theGlobal Philanthropy Forum, Tracy Palandjian, CEO of Social Finance, Inc., served on a panel discussion around the challenges and opportunities of impact investing. In the below interview with Tracy, we discussed her career trajectory, the first-ever social impact bond in the United Kingdom and its potential to be replicated in the United States, and much more.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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NexThought Monday: Changing Consumer Behavior Via Financial Literacy
After last year’s microcredit crisis in India, many microfinance institutions (MFIs) have reconsidered not only how they lend to customers, but also what responsibilities they have to educate their customers in financial literacy. I recently interviewed Samit Ghosh, founder and CEO of Ujjivan Financial Services, who explained how an innovative financial literacy program developed by nonprofit Parinaam Foundation in collaboration with Ujjivan, seeks to change borrowing behavior.
- Categories
- Education
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Microinsurance in Rapid Expansion Says ILO, Munich Re Report
According to the Microinsurance Innovation Facility of the International Labor Organizationand the Munich Re Foundation, “the number of microinsurance schemes worldwide has increased substantially over the past five years and now reaches an estimated 500 million worldwide.”
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Microfinance Giant Launches Venture Capital Fund For East Africa
Accion, an international microfinance and investment firm, has launched Venture Lab, a $10 million investment vehicle which will provide seed capital and management support to financial inclusion startups worldwide, with a particular focus on East Africa and India.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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