Maasai girls and a man watch a video on a mobile phone prior to the start of a social event advocating against harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) at the Imbirikani Girls High School in Imbirikani, Kenya, April 21, 2016. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola
In Africa, a region where the average customer doesn’t own a smartphone or a bank card, hundreds of millions of people do use some kind of basic phone. That’s prompting developers to build no-frills text-based apps, keeping data consumption down and catering to specific local needs of farmers, merchants, and small business owners.
Plant factories, automated facilities that grow vegetables year-round under controlled conditions, are gaining popularity as the world’s population is expected to pass 9 billion people from the current 7 billion in the next 25 years. But this factory-food-for-all scenario carries a major caveat. If it weren’t for government subsidies, some of these farm operators would already be out of business.
Subsistence farmers in rain-scarce Kenya are looking to solar-powered irrigation systems to aid their thirsty crops. Until now farmers have usually either eliminated rain-fed agriculture from their crop rotations, irrigated their land by flooding it from a nearby river or lake, or used a diesel pump for drip irrigation. But solar irrigation technology from a US company seeks to transform the fortunes of farmers in arid areas.
The speedy rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which experts say is a result of decades of overuse in animal agriculture and human medicine combined with lagging drug development and innovation, has put people everywhere on the brink of what many public health leaders say is a “post-antibiotic” world. A new partnership is committed to providing $44 million in funding in the first year and up to $350 million in new funds over five years to increase the number of antibiotics in the drug-development pipeline.
Investing in female entrepreneurs is not just about checking off a box on gender equality. It is about facilitating significant global economic gains by investing in an underserved and underrepresented talent pool. Women’s participation in the global economy is fundamental to sustained economic growth, and men need to lend more support—and capital—to achieve this future.