What can the success of M-Pesa in Kenya and India Stack in India tell us about the future of digital innovation in the developing world? Nick Hughes, co-founder of M-Pesa & M-Kopa, currently Founder and Managing Director at 4RDigital and Executive Fellow at the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, joined Suresh Sethi, former Managing…
“Voices of the Village” a collaboration between Dharma Life, Siriti and the Wheeler Institute for Business Development The Voice of the Village is a series of conversations on issues that affect those living in rural communities in India – inviting a wide breadth of stakeholders to collaborate and build solutions together. The session focused on…
Through pre-emptive urban planning the government can signal public investment and encourage coordinated private investment in land. How can land and housing policy improve real-estate markets in African cities? Slums are characterised by both low public and private capital investment and are pervasive in urban Africa. Various policy responses are proposed to create urban neighbourhoods…
LBS students have been collaborating with micro-entrepreneurs in Alexandra Township (‘Alex’) in Johannesburg for ten years, with over 700 MBA students helping 134 entrepreneurs respond to business challenges, but the last two years have been the most difficult period for the people of Alex, firstly with COVID and then widespread rioting over 2020 and 2021.…
As part of the Wheeler Institute Climate Initiative, Lucrezia Reichlin, London Business School Professor of Economics and trustee of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation, recently hosted a webinar on “The need for and impact of high quality globally comparable reporting” on 10th March 2022. The guest speaker was Mr. Emmanuel Faber, Chair of…
In a thought-provoking discussion organized for the 3’rd Annual PSDRN Conference and facilitated by Nancy Lee, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, panellists discuss their respective organizations’ efforts and ideas for tackling common issues faced by development finance institutions (DFI) as they attempt to sustainably deploy capital to enact the green recovery.…
Customary land-tenure systems, which can work well in the rural hinterland, cannot accommodate the high prices and complex land markets of large, modern cities. There are at least two key institutional features that present challenges to the land markets of African cities: a lack of property rights and minimal urban planning. Property rights are fundamental…
Following the 2021 COP26 summit (formally known as the United Nations Climate Change Conference) in Glasgow, there are a few pressing questions around challenges and knowledge gaps that may impact implementation of the agreed-upon measures – how do we encourage private investment by better aligning efforts of public institutions with needs of the private sector?…
Private enterprises are poised to play a critical role in the fight against climate change. Not only does climate financing provide a means for realizing lucrative returns on private capital, but it is also in the best interest of private enterprises to adopt new technologies and reform their operating models and supply chains to mitigate…
Urbanisation in Africa represents a huge opportunity for the continent. The increased concentration of people in urban spaces is good for workers and businesses alike, since economic density will bring gains in productivity and quality of life. There are 500 million people living in African cities with another 700 million expected by 2050. This population…