Investing for positive environmental and social impact or good governance (ESG) is becoming the norm rather than the exception in Africa. More than $428 billion in financial assets have been directed to ESG investing in southern, East and West Africa in the past year, according to African Investing for Impact Barometer (AIFIB).
To understand both the
Last September, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released its annual Goalkeeper’s report, highlighting the extraordinary progress made in reducing extreme poverty around the world, while also warning that sustaining this progress would not be easy.
We now have the first actual data points that ring the alarm bells about a new, unfolding story on global
Rural families in Africa who need access to power and investors seeking a decent return on their money are getting together so everyone prospers. The cherry on the cake? It’s good for the environment too.
British investors are funding solar kits for households in East Africa with no access to electricity. As families pay for the
Nairobi, Kenya — Poverty is a blight, and one that disproportionately affects sub-Saharan Africa. It is a vast and complex issue whose tentacles reach into many areas, including climate change, sustainable development and-crucially-global security. The link between poverty and violent extremism is compelling, and means that if we want to address extremism, we
Global health issues are no abstraction when you live and work alongside African villagers in urgent need of food, water, and basic sanitation, according to Bentley professors who have spent more than a decade engaged with such communities.
Recently Bentley’s Health Thought Leadership Network, which advances impactful research in health and healthcare, supported the innovative
On a cool May morning in eastern Rwanda, in the early days of harvest season, an American businesswoman named Gayatri Datar is driving out to meet some of her customers, almost all of whom are farmers of the poorest sort.
Datar and a few passengers bounce along a rutted road in a truck tattooed
GANDHINAGAR: Union minister for new and renewable energy, Piyush Goyal, launched the third ‘Scaling Up Minigrids and Microgrids’ programme, under International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the ongoing annual meetings of African Development Bank in Gandhinagar, on Wednesday.
Goyal urged African nations to participate more actively in the international solar alliance
A competition run by Access Power called the ‘Access Co-Development Facility’ (ACF) has officially closed. Five entrepreneurs have made it as the runner ups for the innovative $7 million funding and support platform for renewable energy projects in Africa.
According to a company statement, the projects were selected from a pool of 82 qualifying projects from
When Ronald Van Harten arrived in Kenya from the Netherlands in 2015 he was determined to invest in solar-powered equipment for homes across Africa, make a profit and help the rural poor get energy.
But within two years his company EcoZoom, which sells solar lights, radios, MP3 players and other equipment to some of Kenya’s poorest
In my opinion, the next hotbed of innovation is Africa, specifically the nations of South Africa, Rwanda and Kenya. Numerous industries are being disrupted at the moment, from the African mobile money market — the undisputed leader of which is Kenyan startup M-Pesa — to job hunting, by South Africa’s Giraffe, a mobile recruitment app for low-income
Imagine walking into a primary healthcare clinic in the rural Eastern Cape where a nurse is able to diagnose complex forms of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). She uses a small, portable machine that resembles a Soda Stream cold drink maker.
With this device the nurse can also measure the amount of virus in
Kenya’s rate of electrification is one of the fastest in the world. It is part of an audacious plan by the Government to provide universal access to energy by 2020 in the context of Vision 2030.
Much has been said about the Last Mile Connectivity Programme. But I believe Kenya will achieve its electrification goals in
The importance of tackling inequality in Africa cannot be overstated. Inequality is undermining growth and threatens to reverse the gains that have been made in the fight against poverty. Four of the world’s five most unequal countries are in Africa.
In South Africa, three billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest half of the population.
Solar technology in Africa, including my country of Uganda, would bring good news to millions of people who today must use firewood, charcoal and dung for cooking. Millions of Africans die from lung infections caused by breathing fumes from these fires, millions more from eating spoiled food, drinking contaminated water and having spoiled medicines, because
Nearly 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 300 million people depend on corn, or maize, as their main food source. Maize is the most widely harvested agricultural product in Africa and is grown by small farmers who rely heavily on rainwater rather than irrigation. The crop is
GreenWish Partners, a Paris-based independent power producer, will invest $280 million to build solar-power plants in Nigeria that are expected to start producing electricity in the first quarter of next year.
A plant in the southeastern state of Enugu will produce 100 megawatts, while the company will build two others of 50 megawatts each in the
The best way for millions of farmers in Africa to escape poverty is to move from rain-fed farming to irrigated farming. Irrigation transforms farming by allowing for annual production instead of sporadic production. Using the irrigation technology developed by KickStart International, a nonprofit social enterprise co-founded and led by Dr. Martin Fisher, farmers in Africa
Since 2008, MIT economist Tavneet Suri has studied the financial and social impacts of Kenyan mobile-money services, which allow users to store and exchange monetary values via mobile phone. Her work has shown that these services have helped Kenyans save more money and weather financial storms, among other benefits.
Read more at MIT
Simple solutions can often have dramatic effects.
That’s the case in many parts of rural Africa, where the lack of access to or high cost of electricity prevents many people from basics most of us take for granted, like refrigerators.
Nigerian Mohammed Bah Abba’s innovative
A chip containing millions of genetic variations that are common in Africa could help scientists bring the benefits of precision medicine to the continent.
The chip could lead to new insights into human health as well as new treatments that work better on Africans. Its developers say it will be ready to use in early 2017.
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