The coronavirus pandemic has become all too familiar in the last 5 to 6 months. This crisis started as a health one and is morphing into a recession affecting global economies. The high transmissibility of the virus has caused countries and cities to lock down. However, from an alternate perspective, this situation has presented many opportunities and transformed the way we function, as humans and societies.
Mirembe sits under the shade of her fish stall at the fresh market covering herself from the sun. She sells delicious fresh Mukene and Tilapia. She is just one of the many key actors in the fish value chain which allows this fresh catch to reach customers all over the world. This intricate fish value chain provides a primary source of income and livelihood to 1.5 million Ugandans.
goMediCAL is a m-health service, accessible via a mobile application, that helps manage the patient-doctor relationship. Available for now only in Benin, it allows people to make an appointment with a doctor, and pay either for themselves, relatives or friends. It also allows doctors to access the patient’s medical file.
As a pioneer in the m-Health industry in Benin, goMediCAL was launched about two years ago by OPEN SI,
Tontines are traditional, informal savings groups that allow groups of women across Francophone Africa and other regions in the world to set aside money on a regular basis with the aim of accessing a larger amount through loans after a certain period of time. Each month women contribute their share of money to the tontine. At the end of each month one of the women in the group will gain the pot as a loan.
The disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has been so dramatic that it has changed the way we live – how we interact with each other, how we work and how we do business. It is likely that nothing will ever be quite the same, even once we get it under control. Governments in many countries have put in place rules on social distancing to stop the spread of the virus.
Superplatforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba are transforming the global financial marketplace with “big brands, big budgets and big data.” As a “platform of platforms,” a superplatform holds immense disruptive power and can pave the way for a new-generation financial sector, one with smarter payment and lending models and wider outreach. In Nepal, where the smartphone penetration rate is 75% and poised to reach 90% by 2025,
There are reportedly 570 million farms in the world of which more than 500 million are family farms. Among these farms, an estimated 475 million are small farms, less than 2 hectares in area, cultivated by smallholder farmers. About 3 billion rural people live in these farms, working on their plots to supply food to a substantial proportion of the world’s population while also producing food for household consumption.
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Cocoa is now called as the “gold” of Ivory Coast as it holds the prestigious position of the most coveted raw material that the country produces. However, at the local level, the country deals with various issues such as cocoa tree diseases; massive deforestation; child labor in cocoa plantations; and not much improvement in income for farmers and their families.
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Le cacao est désormais appelé l’or de la Côte d’Ivoire, laquelle tient la place de prestige de premier producteur mondial de cette matière première convoitée. Pourtant, au niveau local, le pays affronte, avec plus ou moins de réussite, différentes problématiques telles que les maladies des cacaoyers ; la déforestation massive ; le travail des enfants dans les plantations de cacao ou encore l’amélioration des revenus des producteurs et de leurs familles.
Amarante Consulting was recently contracted by UNCDF in Nepal to develop remittance-linked use-cases for migrants on an innovative digital architecture. We kick-started this project in October 2018 with the preparation of a concept note, identification of partner institutions and a market scan. As a next step, we travelled to the rural and semi-urban areas of Banepa and Panchkal to interview a range of stakeholders including migrants and their families,