Science that answers Africa's grand challenges

Mobile money is celebrated as a financial-inclusion success, but its effect on micro-enterprises in border towns — where currency friction and informal trade dominate — is under-studied. Using a two-wave panel of 890 micro-entrepreneurs, we estimate causal effects on revenue growth, savings behaviour and supplier credit.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces a critical shortage of skilled nurses, yet working nurses rarely access career-progression education. We surveyed 1,860 nurses across 11 countries studying through ODEL programmes to identify the barriers that stall completion and the platform features that most predict success.

Smallholder farms produce most of the food consumed across East Africa, yet yield forecasting tools designed for them are almost non-existent. We present a gradient-boosted ensemble that forecasts maize and teff yields up to 60 days before harvest using freely available satellite indices and minimal smartphone weather logs.