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Profile of The $50m Goodwell West Africa Fund

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Goodwell Microfinance Development Company is a Netherlands based social investment company which mobilizes capital for microfinance institutions (MFIs) through equity investments. Having successfully operated its first microfinance development company in India since 2006, Goodwell in 2009 launched a second investment company in West Africa.

 

The US$50.0 million West Africa Fund is to focus its investments in Nigeria and Ghana geographically. Other partners and co-sponsors of the Fund are:

  • · KFW;
  • · FMO;
  • · NM ; and
  • · other private investors

 

Part of Goodwell NL’s core strategy is to invest in entrepreneurial microfinance institutions with the goal of creating a substantial social impact and an attractive financial return. The key objective is to work with local partners to improve access to affordable financial services for millions of people at the ‘base of the pyramid’.

 

The Goodwell West Africa Fund operates with the principal belief that improving access to affordable financial services for people at the “Base of the Pyramid” contribute to sustainable development. This improvement can best be achieved by developing and scaling up entrepreneurial microfinance institutions. The established funds also provides commercial long-term capital and active support to start-up and growth phase microfinance institutions (MFIs) to kick-start and accelerate their growth and build value whilst maintaining their social focus.

Lenovo Chases Small and Medium Businesses With New Server Based on Intel “Sandy Bridge-DT” Xeon E3-1200 Processors

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China based IBM offshoot PC and Server maker Lenovo, is one of the first vendors to come out with entry-level tower servers aimed at small and medium businesses based on Intel’s “Sandy Bridge-DT” Xeon E3-1200 processors. The Xeon E3 chips are designed for single-socket servers and workstations. They were previewed by Intel back in March and started shipping in early April for both servers and for workstations with Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 GPUs embedded on certain models of the chips.

 

All of the chips have four cores except for the 20 watt E3-1220L, which has two cores. The remaining Xeon E3 models run at between 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz and have power draws of between 45 and 95 watts. The chips make use of the “Cougar Point” series of chipsets from Intel.

 

Lenovo was initially reselling selected models of IBM’s System x tower and rack servers in the wake of acquiring IBM’s PC business a few years back, but has been doing its own server design and manufacturing more recently. The company is also partnering with Intel to be an early adopter of the AppUp Small Business Service, which was announced in May and which brings cloud-style utility pricing for servers and applications to x64 servers installed at SMB shops.

 

Oddly enough, Lenovo is using an earlier ThinkServer TS200v tower server as the basis for its AppUp offering rather than the new TS130 and TS430 machines – marry that with the delays in deliveries of Sandy Bridge entry servers in the wake of the bug that was discovered in the Cougar Point chipsets back in January.

 

The TS130 tower server is based on the C206 version of the Cougar Point chipset, and like other Xeon E3 machines, only has four DDR3 memory slots on its system board. At this time, Lenovo only support 2GB or 4GB memory sticks in the box, for a maximum of 16GB of memory. Lenovo is putting ECC memory in the box for increased reliability, and is also using the RAID data protection cooked into the C206 chipset and SATA disk ports to provide mirroring for disks.

 

rffab – Raising Funds For African Businesses-

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rffab is a social initiative for creating financing opportunities for African businesses. rffab focuses on creating opportunities and an enabling environment for ordinary people seeking to climb up the business ladder but are challenged or constrained by the rigidities of conventional financial mechanisms.

 

We acknowledge getting funded can be critical to the success of any business, since capital allow businesses to develop and promote their products and/or buy necessary equipment. Receiving funding can be the difference between success and failure for a business.

 

rffab offers businesses the opportunity to access funding but encourage more responsibility and transparency as we jointly work together to build a more sustainable business environment.

 

Mission

To serve as an efficient channel to raise and distribute funds to businesses in sub Saharan Africa.

 

Target Businesses

Prudent businesses that contribute to building strong communities and improving quality of life. They should be socially and environmentally responsible.

rffab seeks to promote sustainable long term businesses while insisting on a positive impact on the bottom line. Our work helps tackle issues such as poverty and access to finance through our involvement in microfinance.

 

How it works

  • · Businesses/entrepreneurs submit their funding requests online

  • · Information are displayed on the website

  • · Potential investors browse through the list of requests and select their preferred choice

  • · Investors are connected with entrepreneurs/businesses

The funding is categorised into SME Financing and Micro Lending

 

JCS Investment Limited Is A Ghana Based Goodwell Partner – Good Source For Funds

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We just found a funding company in Ghana for entrepreneurs. You can approach them for funding. They work with Dutch Goodwell Investment which invested in Nigerian Pagatech recently.

 

JCS Investment Limited is a Social Investment Organization licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an Investment Adviser in Ghana. The company which was established in 2004 is focused on providing sustainable long term investments, optimum returns and ‘triple bottom line’ value to its shareholders. In other words,  it is working towards giving our stakeholders

 

  • Positive Economic Returns

  • Strong Social Impact

  • High Environmental Standards

 

With a dedicated team of analysts carefully selects investments and projects that can achieve positive impact, both for the Society and the Environment, this team delivers in its partnership with Dutch based Goodwell Investments. Their  choices of investments are researched in the Context of Sector Development within the Ghanaian economy. And the undertakes comprehensive due diligence to ensure prudent investments.

 

 

 

Mission

JCS is committed to providing an efficient channel to raise and distribute funds to businesses in sub Saharan Africa. We work closely with our Business Partners encouraging best practice, and helping revitalise Investment Businesses operating in the social sphere. We welcome partnership with prudent businesses that contribute to building strong communities and improving quality of life.

Cross River State Government Ramps Up Its Smartgov.CRSG Initiative

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The Cross River State Government is pushing its   Smart Government Cross River (SmartGovCRSG) Limited which is determined to improve accountability in governance, simplify access to social services and create a robust social safety net for citizen of the state.

 

The SmartGov initiative allows the Cross River state government to leverage its investments in technology, automate its ministries, department and agencies, identify all citizens and residents, track and monitor usage of social services, enhance internally generated revenue and automate disbursements and payments by government.

 

This captures the infrastructure including electronic payment gateway, smartcard management system, risk and fraud management system and an enterprise (data exchange) service-oriented bus. It also includes biometric-based identity smartcity cards which would be issued to citizens and residents under the SmartGov project and would contain cardholders’ information while providing cardholders with access to healthcare, pension, transportation, educational bursaries, social amenities and benefits.

 

 

Equally, the SmartGov initiative would enable Cross River State to identify its citizens, grow revenue, eliminate wastage, simplify governance and increase access to government services.

 

 

This is one huge project the government is working on to position itself in the arena of Government 2.0.