SOCIAL ENTERPRISE NEWS AND DISCUSSION

January 25, 2012 marks the one year anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.  Coincidentally it is also the birthday of Heba Hosny, creator of a new daily deal social venture called 7ala Wa7da. 7ala Wa7da is a crowdfunding platform for NGOs.  It won Hosny third prize in the Ideathon this past October at ArabNet in Cairo, Egypt. Hosny [...]

IBM is doing good for sugar cane farms.  Each month, sugar cane cutters in Kenya would take 2 to 3 days off work to travel to banks for long queues to deposit their pay.  How IBM helps is by providing sugar cane cutters the ability to deposit the money into their bank accounts via mobile [...]

Indego Africa is a non-profit social enterprise that is tackling poverty by supporting women in Rwanda with the means to build sustainable businesses so they can lift themselves out of poverty.  Their business model follows this pattern:  partner with for-profit cooperatives of women artisans in Rwanda, pay them for their products which would be sold [...]

Fred Swaniker lived in many places across Africa.  Growing up, he was trying to understand why his native continent is so poor despite having numerous resources.  He soon came to the conclusion that Africa needed ethical leadership and that much of Africa’s future depended on that.  During his graduate studies at Stanford, he decided it [...]

Back in mid-2011, non-profit venture fund organization Acumen Fund launched the East Africa Fellows Program, a program that provides leadership training for aspiring East African social entrepreneurs.  With a vision to tackle poverty by providing funding to and empowering social enterprises and leaders, East Africa Fellows Program supplements Acumen Fund’s already popular Global Fellows Program, where [...]