Publication database

This report details the impact of the Bamboo Finance portfolio of 46 companies across 30 countries. Bamboo Finance is a commercial private equity firm specialising in investing in business models that benefit low-income communities in emerging markets.

This report discusses the state of the mobile money sector and industry trends, and it provides insights into the rollout and adoption of other mobile financial services such as mobile insurance. It is designed to provide practitioner and stakeholders, such as regulators, senior executives in the telecommunications and banking sectors, and international development agencies, with an overview of the industry and its impact on the financial lives of unbanked and under banked users.

This report explores the gap in global affordable housing - it outlines how four approaches - unlocking land supply, reducing construction costs, improving operations and maintenance, and lowering financing costs for buyers and developers - could reduce the cost of affordable housing by 20 to 50%, and substantially narrow the affordable housing gap by 2025.

This report documents an interview with Ruban Selvanayagam from Fez Tá Pronto Construction System in Brazil, a real estate development model that is focused on serving people at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) with affordable and high quality housing. It discusses the dysfunctional mainstream housing market dynamics, and the current practical challenges that face the scheme.

This case study reviews social enterprises operating in the agriculture and health sectors in Kenya. It considers how the lack of a widely-accepted social enterprise definition influences activity in Kenya, and it identifies niches within which agriculture and health sector social enterprises are operating.

This note illustrates how water, sanitation and hygiene 'WASH' service provision can be approached in a way that fosters inclusion, promotes equality, and places the concerns of women and girls at the centre of programme planning and implementation. It outlines the example of establishing communal sanitation facilities in Maputo (Mozambique) and Naivasha (Kenya).

This paper extracts lessons learned in working with informal finance institutions. It is designed for practitioners working to address the gap between supply and demand in agricultural finance, and is intended to support efforts to unlock capital for smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs.

This report presents a roadmap discussing the vision for the future of the BoP domain. This vision possesses a culture of sharing knowledge, as well as the platforms and institutions to do so effectively; systematically understands the factors that lead to success, as well as failure. It also outlines the need to pool best practices in business model development, impact assessment, and capacity building to support BoP enterprises more efficiently; and the community and capital to give BoP enterprise leaders support.

This step-by-step guide provides information on linking informal savings groups to formal financial services. It includes key principles, recommended stages, examples and how-to advice.

The report highlights two big global challenges for the current state of data: the challenge of invisibility, for instance gaps in what we know and when we know it and the challenge of inequality , including the gaps between those who know and those who do not know what they need to know make their own decisions. The IEAG report makes specific recommendations on how to address these challenges, calling for a UN-led effort to mobilise the data revolution for sustainable development.