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Rwanda’s national economy relies heavily on coffee, which accounts for 30% of the country’s exports. Coffee washing businesses that dry the farmers' coffee beans before export are an important part of the supply chain behind those exports. Each year...

Until recently, achieving financial inclusion for the world’s unbanked poor was a pressing goal with perplexing obstacles. But in several countries across Asia, Africa and beyond, a possible solution is starting to emerge. Mobile payment systems...

In October 2014 IPA’s West Africa programs director woke up at 5AM to his cell phone ringing and a staffer reassuring him “the Parliament is on fire, but don’t worry, everybody’s fine, we’re going to work from home today.” In a blog post below,...

Researchers, policymakers, investors and practitioners joined forces to move forward in the dialogue around microcredit’s impact on the lives of the poor. Many themes emerged from the day, but perhaps the most salient came from Dean Karlan, who...

Until recently, the drive towards financial inclusion was commonly framed in terms of access. Yet as the explosion of digital financial services and simplified account opening procedures have begun to make financial services accessible to the poor,...

Inspired by previous years, it started out innocently enough: Hey @charlesjkenny are we doing #developmentvalentines again this year? — Timothy Ogden (@timothyogden) February 12, 2015

Mobile money is spreading at a rapid pace throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are 203 million registered mobile money accounts worldwide and 256 mobile money services in operation, an impressive 100 percent increase over 2011. The...

 

In Peru, the average recipient of a conditional cash transfer payment has to travel five hours to get to the nearest bank branch or ATM, spending 10% of the payment in transportation costs along the way.  

In the past couple of decades, the world has experienced a radical shift in the way information is accessed and delivered. The technological revolution has made it possible for most people in rich countries and a significant number in poor countries...

  Development policy should be redesigned to reflect new insights about human behavior, according to a new World Bank report. The report calls on the development community to shift its agenda based on new insights in behavioral economics, and...

Since first appearing in March 2014 in rural Guinea, the Ebola virus has infected at least 17,800 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and killed more than 6,300, according to figures from the Center for Disease Control from early December...

  Watanic Jabateh, an enumerator for IPA in Liberia, died on October 9, 2014. She was 25.  

Now Accepting Proposals: Competitive Research Fund on Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium Enterprise Growth

  Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Heather Lanthorn, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health, who worked on the SMS reminders for malaria study. After the data collection was complete, she conducted a qualitative follow-up...

    Uganda has one of the highest primary school drop-out rates in the world. Though the country abolished most primary school fees in 1997, a recent UNICEF report found that 81% of parents cited financial constraints as the reason why their...

  In Uganda, nearly half of surveyed adults were unable to correctly answer a question about interest rates according to a recent Finscope study. When asked “If you were offered a loan with 5% monthly interest rate and a loan with 20% annual...

  Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in The Broker Business training programs are a popular tool used by policy-makers to promote SME growth. However, recent evidence suggests that these programs rarely lead to firm growth or job creation...