All Private Sector & Development magazine articles
A few lessons from the DFID impact fund experience
While poor people in developing countries are more than willing to pay for basic goods and services, the existing private sector solutions in place so far do not allow them to meet such needs effectiv...
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Improving air transport efficiency in Africa
The opportunities presented by air transport are particularly relevant to Africa, however the sector is hampered by lingering over-dependence on governments, supervisory bodies that are often ineffici...
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Social business: the challenge of scaling up
Entrepreneurship can meet the needs of “base-of-the-pyramid” populations, provided the business in question has reached the critical size needed for profitability and sustainability. Examples of “incl...
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Palmis Enèji: from NGO to enterprise - the story of a social business in Haiti
In 2012, the French NGO EDM launched a programme to distribute Palmis Enèji cooking and lighting appliances to meet energy demand among the poorest sections of the Haitian population. Two years ago, t...
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The diversity of social business: the case of Madagascar
Despite a troubled macroeconomic and political environment, Madagascar possesses a fairly diversified, dynamic economic fabric in comparison to other countries with a similar level of development. Thi...
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Using measurement to enhance and share social business practices
To achieve credibility, social entrepreneurship must spell out the basic principles underlying its practices and objectively measure its outcomes. Measuring social performance – particularly by analys...
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Access to quality sanitation in kenyan slums: Sanergy's model
Sanergy strives to leverage the entire sanitation value chain to create vibrant micro-businesses in informal settlements and by-products that can be marketed to Kenyan farmers. Hazardous waste is remo...
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The ambitious and challenges of social business - Better definiting and structuring the sector
Social business is a demanding business model: social enterprises pursue social or environmental goals while also seeking long-term profitability and they face many challenges. In the wide- ranging ‘i...
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Sub-Saharan Africa: Growth also depends on the funding of affordable housing
Well-functioning areas are a key issue for Africa’s development. The housing sector, with the construction of millions of affordable homes for the masses in Africa, represents a major challenge but al...
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The Big Bang in Big Data: an opportunity for African urban policies
Each day, our intensive use of information technologies generates trillions of data bytes termed “Big Data”. Some big data has a high socio-behavioural value and may therefore be of use in producing d...
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Teaching teachers: first steps in improving education in Sub-Saharan Africa
Elun is a nonprofit providing free teacher education to schools in the developing world with a number of ongoing projects in Rwanda, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. This article presents Elun’s id...
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Encouraging banking sector participation in climate finance, the case of Kenya
The development of energy resources and energy efficiency in Kenya is a current necessity as well as a big challenge. To meet that challenge, Kenya's Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has partnered w...
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Pooling – an innovative way of releasing capital for renewable energy in India
The Indian government's electrification plans offers major opportunities for renewable energies, with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) best placed to meet them. They, however, face challenges...
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Chile, a case of market-driven transition to renewables
Chile has seen an astonishing surge in renewable energy production. Key factors underlying this success: an abundance of natural resources, an open energy market and a robust regulatory framework, com...
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Towards carbon risk and climate performance recognition in the financial sector
Despite the clear need for their involvement, finance-industry players currently remain largely disengaged from the investment needs of the low-carbon economy. ‘Carbon risk' and ‘climate performance'...
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Green bonds – a promising tool for climate finance
The green bonds market is booming – boosting the growing flows of private capital being channelled towards energy transition and with the potential, ultimately, to encourage the direct financing of gr...
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Adapting to climate-change: the private sector can contribute
Adapting to climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century – its effects are already evident and widespread, and the developing world is particularly vulnerable. Multilateral develop...
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Tomorrow's Africa: secondary and tertiary education, the catalyst for change
Africa countries have made huge strides in providing universal access to primary schooling, but secondary and tertiary educational opportunities lag far behind – creating enormous development challeng...
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$ 40 billion needed to reduce global deforestation
Private financing for sustainable forest management is far greater than public financing, but still falls far short of what is needed to halve global deforestation by 2020. There is a serious informat...
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Meeting the challenge of funding the transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient societies
Current funding levels are insufficient to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, despite resources such as some of the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. For a successful transition to a lo...
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