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Microcredit - Loose Change for
from Techfastly-September
by Techfastly
Microcredit - Loose Change for Real Change
There are significant benefits among the “gung-ho entrepreneurs” (individuals who established businesses before microfinance wave). The effects are unsatisfying to those who had no previous businesses (reluctant entrepreneurs).
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From the previous decades up to the early 2000s, international development was to be propelled by microloans. The objective was to lend small loans to individuals in developing countries to assist them in developing and also expanding their small businesses hence kicking poverty out of their families. Profits from the returned loans would then be used to lend to more individuals aiming at a very large number of families to do away with poverty.
Many microfinance lending organizations began at those times. Very many organizations started to offer loans as potential donors and investors supplied funds to microcredit. By the end of 2013, there was a rise in the number of borrowers to more than 200 million. Accion US Network is an example of one such institution in the US. It is the largest nonprofit microfinance network in the US and works with people to help them grow their business.
What Is Microcredit?
Microcredit is an extension of small loans to poor individuals who lack steady, verifiable, or collateral employment or credit history. In the US, it is generally for loans less than $50,000 to entrepreneurs who cannot borrow from a bank.
It was designed to alleviate poverty by promoting entrepreneurship. Many of the beneficiaries of microcredits are illiterate individuals who lack the capacity and paper competence needed in the application of conventional loans.
Microfinance is deemed to be part of microfinance, although many times they are used interchangeably. It provides a variety of financial services, such as savings accounts for poor individuals.
Successful Examples:
In 2009, an estimated 75 million individuals benefited from microloans that totaled to around US$38 billion. The repayment success rate ranges between 95%-98%, according to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the early 1980s. A study found that more than half of US loan recipients escaped poverty in 5 years.
Here are some of the successful most influential and largest microfinance institutions today:
Kiva
Kiva is a non-profit microfinance institution operating in the U.S and other 85+ global countries. It is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded in 2005. It uses crowd-funding mechanisms and peer-topeer methods of lending.
It allows persons to directly lend to borrowers in other nations who don’t have access to the traditional financing sources. Financing for health services, education, and small businesses are interest-free. Kiva has extended over $1.5 billion microloans to more
than 3 billion borrowers in 2020. This platform has around 2 million borrowers and about 1.8 million lenders.
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank is considered to be the origin of the modern microcredit then other banks introduced it despite the initial misgivings. The year 2005 was declared the International year of microcredit by the United Nations. By 2012, microcredit became very common in developing nations. It was presented as an enormous tool of poverty alleviation with a focus on feminization poverty.
The bank utilized a form of peer group pressure that helped in ensuring every individual was fiscally responsible. The borrowers were supposed to be groups of fives with the other community members who also needed loans.
The groups capitalized on ideas of social capital and the notion that the communities have behavioral modes, networks, and links that would encourage individuals to repay their loans.
Generally, the loans were sequentially issued and had a weekly or biweekly repayment period with very low rates as possible. In 2006, Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus, the founder, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering in that microcredit work.
Currently, there are more than 7000 microcredit institutions globally lend around $2.7 billion to borrowers more than 17 million.
Brac
It is another Microfinance Institution founded in Bangladesh in 1972. The institution offers a variety of services in different niches including education, human rights, economic development, and health.
Micro savings services, housing assistance, grants, and small business loans are some of the services provided. Brac is known to operate in many developing nations, from Haiti, Myanmar to the Philippines. It has more than 7 million borrowers, and in 2020 its gross portfolio profit has hit over $4 billion.
Accion US Network
Accion is an American nonprofit microfinance organization headquartered in New York. It is the largest and only national microfinance network in the US. Its mission is to give people the necessary financial tools they need to create or grow a successful business. It has made nearly 50,000 loans totaling over $450 million as of January 2014. It also lends over $3.7 million to small businesses a month. 97% of businesses remained open one year after receiving a loan from Accion despite challenging economic times.
Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI)
This is the oldest Indonesian Bank founded in Jakarta in 1896. It is established to be one of the largest financial institutions in Indonesia, primarily operating in smallscale and as a microloans lender. This bank is majorly owned by the government and has over 30 million clients doing business with the bank through its rural services posts and thousands of branches across South East Asia.
Challenges Despite Success
Microfinance faces operational, strategic, compliance, and operational risks, just like any other industry. There’re risks such as over-indebtedness according to the nature of the markets in which these micro-finance institutions operate that are very inherent and more prevalent to microfinance.
Despite the way microfinance is excessively hyped, it does not provide a cure to poverty, but stable job opportunities do. In the journey to help the poor, the focus should not be investing in microfinance but supporting the labor-intensive large industries.
A comprehensive study concluded that microloan tends to be more beneficial to the individuals above the poverty line because they are more willing to invest in new technologies that will generate income as compared to the individuals below the poverty line.
These individuals only tend to secure a conservative loan that protects their subsistence, and they don’t invest in fixed capital, new technologies, or hiring of the labor force.
Another study in India about the limitation of entrepreneurship by credit constraints found that there are significant benefits among the “gungho entrepreneurs” (individuals who established businesses before microfinance wave). The effects are unsatisfying to those
Model technology choices can generate dynamics matching the ones observed in the data in which the reluctant entrepreneurs only access a diminishing returns technology. In contrast, the gung-ho entrepreneurs can access to high fixed costs technology but with high returns.
The chief executive of Basix, Vijay Mahajan, observed that microloans reduce the flow of cash to the poor, and even they do more harm than good due to the high-interest rates charged by some microcredit institutions. If the clients don’t earn higher returns on their investments than the set interests to be paid, then they will just become poor, not wealthier due to microcredit.
Failure of Microcredit in South Africa
The international development community rushed to South Africa immediately after the end of the apartheid in 1994 to promote the microfinance model. They proclaimed that it would bring new dignity, incomes, jobs, and empowerment to the impoverished South Africans with high expectations of rapid progress.
http://ignatianeconomics.blogspot. com/
The result of this market-driven microcredit introduced to post-apartheid South Africa was destructive. It has caused severe damage to the South African society and the economy at large despite being lauded too much.
Many investors have left that bloated microfinance sector as it is about to collapse, as argued by many users. The problems induced in the microcredit sector in South Africa were of two forms: First, it is an anti-developmental intervention, meaning that it supports the small scale income generating ideas, but in practice, it supports consumption spending. Its impact on South Africa is that it created a costly and risky way in support of the immediate consumption needs of the poor. There are very few poor people who can repay the microloans using their secure income streams, resulting in very high unemployment rates than it was before the apartheid period.
The other major problem with the South African microcredit is the aspect of extensive commercialization. It was introduced in the microcredit sector globally to boost its financial sustainability. It’s estimated that about 40% of the workforce in South Africa is spent on debt repayments.
The impoverished South Africans are now trapped in micro debts of unimaginable proportions. The individuals now realize that the objective of these private microfinance institutions wasn’t to help them uplift their lives out of poverty but to reap as much value from them within a short period before getting lost to other business fields.
The South African microcredit models and supports have been discredited widely just like their counterparts in other parts of the world. It will be a very difficult task to alleviate the poor from the microcredit sector owing that the country even with the post-apartheid government, has official sanctions of exploiting the most bankrupt black communities.
There is No One Size Fits All Solution
In the microfinance sector, there is no one size fits all approaches in the promotion of poverty reduction, empowerment, and development. Practitioners of microfinance need to develop structured approaches on how their target beneficiaries may utilize the services designed to the demographic of the society. A creative approach should be adopted that meets the financial service needs of the low-income community segments and the poor. Policies that provide the freedom to set payment conditions and terms for various borrowers are more beneficial to income-generating activities and businesses. The borrowers may be more financially empowered and disciplined by tailor fitting the repayment schemes to specific situations. It also reduces the risks of a borrower defaulting on their loan. Communities and practitioners should possess the virtue of saying no, particularly on conditions and terms that will negatively affect a person’s ability to repay their loan, whether long or short-term.
Erase the misunderstanding, learn the trade! According to Youngquist, a world vision official, addressing the misconceptions in such a manner that microfinance is perceived as an integrated social-developmental tool as it’s supposed to be is a very good starting step. Microfinance implementation isn’t for all. The best avenue for success and real opportunities are offered by the development practitioners who have partnered with established microfinance service providers. Microcredit isn’t’ a cure-all and a panacea intervention. Money alone can’t solve all the problems within a household or the community at large - Geoffrey M”.
AI in Journalism
AI is continually making waves in the news and journalism industry. The work of communicating everything that happens in the society seems like it’s something entirely human-dependent. Furthermore, what does a machine have to do with what happens in the news?
Journalism, as we know, has a large consumer base and is highly dependent on technology from the collection of data from different news sources to the publication of the content.
Despite journalism being one of the consumers of technology, technological advancements change the way the news and journalism are carried out. AI is continuously focused on improving news production, publishing, and sharing ideas in particular.
In automated or algorithmic or robot journalism, computer programs are used to generate news articles. Computers, rather than human reporters, automatically produce stories through AI (Artificial Intelligence) software. These programs organize, interpret, and also present the data in a readable manner. Artificial intelligence in journalism involves algorithms that scan large amounts of given data, select from pre-programmed articles, order key points and insert information such as places, amounts, statistics, and names. There is also the potential to customize the output to fit a specific tone, style, and voice.
Common Worldwide Data Leaks
In recent years, investigative journalists had a protective duty between the public sphere and their confidential information sources. However, this duty has been undergoing changes in the last two decades with the introduction of new media. Some instances like Snowden and WikiLeaks show how contemporary the media allows people to directly release data to the global audience, which raises the question of how the operations of journalists are affected by the recent leaks.
The Bahamian Files
In the Bahamas, some 400,000 documents were leaked from the register of legal entities on offshore companies, including Ukrainians. There was data of about 60 companies on the Ukrainian part of the Bahamian archive. Massive datasets include information on citizens of more than 100 countries who had applied to one of the globally famous offshore zones, the Caribbean jurisdiction for the registration of their businesses.
The Bahamian files were publicly made available on midday. The documents had information on different Germans’ offshore secrets. The DDoS (Distributed Denial of Secrets) published a full archive of the documents, unlike the ICIJ, who posted the Bahamas leaks, with no documents. The archive posted by the DDoS contained much larger data amounts than the Bahamas Leaks with some of it, namely until 2018, relating to a very recent period.
As mentioned earlier, the Ukrainian part of the Bahamian archive contained information of about 60 companies. The companies were mostly founded by Ukrainians, low profile businessmen who were not part of the government, but several
It’s not a crime to register companies in offshore jurisdictions. It is a global exercise that occurs for various reasons, such as convenience in the structuring of one’s business and quality services in the offshore zones. You may have only heard of Panama Leaks or WikiLeaks. However, every few months, there is a leak of information that journalists cover. For example, the FDA data dump revealed breast and dental implant problems among hidden reports. The majority of the reports about the 5.8 medical device problems that the FDA accessed were breast and dental implants. Many medical device complaints are kept at the FDA, where they are accessible to the general public. The 5.8 million complaints were the ‘alternative summary reports’ that were hidden for decades, and the FDA only could access the files; nurses and doctors couldn’t even see them. Isabel dos Santos, a businesswoman, was accused of making a fortune at the Angola citizens’ expense, as revealed in the Luanda Leaks. She moved billions through her shell empire, which was made possible by consultants, lawyers, and accountants. The businesswoman claimed that her success was self-made, but an investigation, Luanda Leaks, by 36 media partners and the ICIJ revealed the true source of her wealth. Isabel dos Santos in her defense, accused the Luanda authorities of using falsified documents to freeze her assets as presented in her evidence. The Luanda authorities denied the claims of Isabel alleging false emails and a fake passport. They further stressed that the estimated damages in the proceedings against her are more than 5 billion dollars by the state’s estimates.
There have been massive data leaks in recent years from the offshore jurisdictions like the offshore leaks, Panama papers, Bahamas leaks, and
FDA Data Dump
paradise papers.
The Luanda Leaks
Incorporation of Machine Learning (ML) in Journalism
In some instances, machine learning cannot do something you couldn’t; but what machine learning does is accomplish it faster than humans. Machine learning has the potential to find emails, the same as the ones you already have, assist you in finding frames of a given video with a senator, etc. The computer needs to be fed particular knowledge on the questions you are trying to find solutions.
This knowledge helps you solve several common problem patterns such as flagging matching things from given sets of documents, filtering complex data point spreadsheets, searching through picture piles, and
sorting caches of reader tips. It’s up to you to determine whether the images, data points, or the documents found via machine learning are newsworthy or exciting. Still, ML can get you from an unmanageable pile to a manageable one. You should also know that the computer can be mistaken, confused, and fail to understand your question like any other source, so continue with your journalism. ML is continuously being incorporated and advanced in the journalism industry so that it perfectly answers questions that reporters have concerning their data.
Machine learning techniques greatly help journalists in daily stories and accomplish some investigations that may involve going through vast piles of documents for months, which can be done in just a week. Journalists have been known to utilize machine learning tools and codes like in the following real-world examples: • finding assaults classified as minor but were serious ones • detecting sexual abuse complaints in disciplinary reports • detecting political advertising • finding the discussed topics by the members of congress • detecting toxic comments
Learning ML With Free Hands-on Videos
As a journalist, you can learn how to how to incorporate ML in your investigation tasks through several online coding notebooks and videos. Get to try your hands in searching images, analyzing text with AI, and sorting images.
You can enter these pre-trained machine learning lessons by John Keefe, an editor at Quartz Al Studio, and a member of the Mauritius leaks. There are 15 lessons which are 4-15 minutes. You’ll get through a series of project examples focused on journalism like sorting docs into piles, detecting objects in images, and also the extraction of individuals’ names from troves of texts.
The lessons utilize the fast.ai ML library for python, which makes Machine Learning easy for individuals who are not well versed in computers and math. The videos can be your preferred journalist oriented primer for the free and excellent fast.ai course practical deep learning for coders, which will significantly help you - Geoffrey M ”.
Everything You Need to Know About IPv4 and IPv6
What is an IP Address?
The IP address is a common term we come across if we speak of the Internet & computers. An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a numerical representation of a particular interface. The Internet protocol is a collection of communication rules via the Internet, including the transmission of messages, streaming video, or a web connection. Internet protocol is a set of internet communication rules. An IP address identifies a network or internet computer.
An IP address, or just the "IP," identifies a device on the Internet or local network. It enables other systems connected via internet protocol to recognize a system. There are two primary versions used in the IP address format—IPv4 & IPv6
The IP address for each device connected to a computer network that uses a communication internet protocol (IP address) is a numerical label. An IP address consists of two main functions the host or network interface identification and localization addressing.
Version 4 (IPv4) of the Internet Protocol defines an IP address as 32-bit numbers. However, the Internet has grown, and IPv4 addresses have deteriorated. A new IP version
(IPv6) was standardized in 1998 using 128 bits for IP addresses. Since the mid-2000s, the use of IPv6 has been ongoing.
An IPv4 address is 32-bit in size, restricting the address space to 4294967296 (232) addresses. Of this number, specific addresses such as private networks (~18 million addresses) and multicast addressing (~270 million addresses) are reserved for specific purposes.
At IPv6, the size of the address in IPv4 was increased from 32 bits to 128 bits and thereby to 2128 (roughly 3.403*1038) addresses. Right now, that is deemed appropriate.
Different reserved addresses and other considerations reduce the total usable address pool of both variants. A range of reserved addresses and other concerns reduce the total usable address pool of both versions. IP addresses are binary numbers but are typically represented as decimal (IPv4) or hexadecimal (IPv6) numbers for easier reading and human use.
The total available address pool of the two versions is that of various reserved addresses and other deliberations. The total available address pool of both versions eliminates a set of reserved addresses and other considerations. IP addresses are binary numbers but are usually represented by decimal numbers for easier reading and human use (IPv5) or hexadecimal numbers (IPv6). Source: www.123rf.com
Understanding the IPv4 Standard
In IPv4 address space, there are a total of 32 bits. For example, the number "24" refers to how many bits are found within a network when it has the address "192.0.2.0/24." Therefore it is possible to calculate the number of bits left for space address. Since all of the IPV4 networks have 32 bits, and each "decimal" segment has an 8-bit address, "192.0.2.0/24" has an 8-bit host address. There is plenty of space for 256 guests. These host addresses are the IP addresses required to connect your computer to the Internet. These bytes are usually referred to as octets, and these octets, bits, and bytes are written in a pointed decimal to be readable. A dotted-decimal separates every IP address octet.
For example, a computer in binary notation has a standard IP address (IPv4):
w.x.y.z
This means pointed decimal: That means: 192.168.1.0
A network component and a node component are two components of an IP address.
For instance, our house address has a house number and street name. Likewise, the network number is equivalent to the name of the streets for computer networks, and the house number is the node's address. The earlier implementation of IPv4 split the address space into network and node components with address groups.
IP addresses have not adopted this system, but Class A, B, and C are still used.
Class A—Net.Node.Node. Node (8 bits for the network address and 24 bits for node addresses)
Class B—Net.Net.Node.Node (16 bits for the network addresses and 24 bits for node addresses)
Class C—Net.Net.Net.Node (24 bits for the network addresses and 8 bits for node address)
Understanding the IPv6 Standard
The Internet Protocol's latest version, IPv6, identifies devices over the Internet to locate
them. In order to communicate online, every device that uses the Internet has its own IP address. It's just as important as the street addresses and zip codes you need to learn to post a letter.
In the Internet's 40 year existence, IPv6 is the most significant update. Future carriers and companies will use IPv6 because the Internet runs out of the assigned IP addresses using the current IPv4 standard.
Eight hexadecimal groups consist of IPv6 addresses. A 16-bit hexadecimal value is given to each hexadecimal community, separated by a colon (:). An example of the IPv6 format is given below:
xxxx: xxxx: xxxx: xxxx: xxxx:
An xxxx unit expresses the 16-bit hexadecimal value. A 4-bit hexadecimal value is shown in every single x. An example of a potential IPv6 address is given below:
4FDD:0010:0000:0022:0022:F387:FE3B:AC4E
The first 64 bits (4FDE:0000:0000:0002) are network but, the rest is the device ID (device bits). The network component is provided by an ISP (ARIN or RIPE) or by the registry.
Exhaustion of the IPv4 Standard
Terms like "run-out," "exhaustion," or "depletion" are used interchangeably when speaking of IPv4 addresses. Whatever word is used, they all point to the same problem – the acute lack of unused IPv4 addresses affecting worldwide network operators now.
A lack of IPv4 addresses will create many problems for a network that needs new users to expand or attach. Most networks are currently trying to reduce the scarcity of IPv4-based transmitting systems, or use CGNAT-types, for example, by obtaining surplus addresses from other networks. Although these solutions can make sense in the immediate term, either solution does not fix the fundamental problem – that in IPv4, there are not enough addresses to sustain the Internet as wide as today. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, making a far greater number of potential addresses than the 32-bit addresses used in IPv4. This creates potentially 340 trillion addresses for each bit corresponding to the ''0'' or ''1.'' IPv4, however, allows 2 ^ 32 combinations with up to 4.7 billion addresses.
The number of usable addresses is, in practice, smaller than that of IPv6 addresses for routing and other purposes, while specific ranges are specifically reserved for use. However, there are still vast numbers of IPv6 addresses available.
Network operators and big businesses are usually expected to receive a /32 address block, smaller companies a /48, and home users a /56 (where a single IPv4 address is typically available). This offers scalability and potential subnetting and enables a nearly infinite number of subnet addresses.
It is commonly misunderstood that assigning large IPv6 prefixes to end customers is wasteful. Still, the IPv6 address space is so large, that a /48 could be assigned to all humans for the coming 480 years before they run out, has been calculated (by Tony Hain).
How do I check if I am on IPv6 now on Windows? (Source)
Preparation
To prepare for this activity:
Log in if necessary.
Activity 1 - Display IPv6 Information
To display IPv6 information:
Open an elevated/administrator command prompt.
To display IP address information use ipconfig. Examine the results. You should see one or more IPv6 addresses, if IPv6 is enabled. A typical Windows 7 computer has a ISATAP tunnel adapter with media disconnected, a Link-local IPv6 Address and a Teredo tunnel adapter. Link-local addresses begin with fe80::/10. ISATAP addresses are specific link-local addresses beginning with fe80::200:5efe/96. Teredo addresses begin with 2001:0::/32.
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show interfaces". Observe the results listed in the interfaces where IPv6 is enabled. All netsh parameters may be abbreviated, but the abbreviation must be a unique parameter. "netsh interface ipv6 show interfaces" may be entered as "netsh i ipv6 sh i".
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show addresses". Now examine the results listing the interface IPv6 addresses.
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show destinationcache". Now examine the results listing recent IPv6 destinations.
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show dnsservers". Now examine the results listing ""IPv6 DNS server"" settings.
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show neighbors". Now examine the results listing IPv6 neighbors. This is comparable to the IPv4 ARP cache.
Enter the command "netsh interface ipv6 show route". Now examine the results listing IPv6 route information - Alagammai Kannappan”.
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