Over the past decade, the idea of investing with a gender lens has moved from the fringes of impact investing into a more mainstream priority for many investors. One recent estimate places global assets under management in investments with defined gender objectives or criteria at more than

The recent Sankalp Africa Summit 2026, which NextBillion covered as a media partner, featured an “Enterprise Showcase” where up-and-coming African businesses shared information about their work and missions.

We interviewed a number of these entrepreneurs and company representatives, asking each of them three questions:

Africa faces a mounting dual challenge at the critical nexus of climate and health. Climate change is intensifying health risks by driving extreme weather events, shifting disease vector patterns, degrading air quality, and threatening food and water security. Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall are accelerating the spread of climate-sensitive diseases such as malaria, d...

Over the past year, many of us working in international development have watched changes unfold at a speed and scale that would have seemed unlikely even two years ago. For organisations operating in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the mounting fiscal pressures on aid budgets were already having visible impacts in the preceding years. But since early 2025, the retre...

Working in insurance throughout my professional career so far, much of it in emerging markets across Asia and Africa, I realized the insurance industry has largely failed the people who need it most. Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), billions of people face constant exposure to health shocks, climate risks and income volatility, yet they generally remain exclud...