Category: The Outlier
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Mobile money: Sub-Saharan Africa leads banking revolution with nearly half the world’s accounts
Sub-Saharan Africa has dominated the global mobile money landscape since 2013, and now boasts twice as many registered accounts as South and East Asia and the Pacific. According to the GSMA’s 2024 state of the industry report, the region has 835-million registered mobile money accounts, nearly half of the world’s 1.75-billion accounts. Last year, 62-billion transactions worth $912-billion were processed in Sub-Saharan…
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Paris 2024: South Africa’s Olympic journey in 7 charts
Paris 2024 – or, officially, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad – gets underway on Friday, 26 July. It will be South Africa’s 21st Games, its ninth since the ban against its participation was lifted in 1992. South African athletes have won a total of 38 medals in the post-apartheid era – 11 gold, 18…
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Rushed and chaotic: The Life Esidimeni tragedy, in charts
In September 2015, the Gauteng department of health decided to end a contract with Life Esidimeni, a group of specialised private psychiatric care hospitals. The decision was part of a wider plan to deinstitutionalise mental healthcare users in the province by placing them into non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in communities. It was also to cut costs. What transpired was a poorly planned,…
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Death trap: Timeline of the Life Esidimeni tragedy
Life Esidimeni, a psychiatric hospital, had been contracted for 30 years by the Gauteng department of health for the long-term, specialised care of mental healthcare patients. Despite warnings from experts, the department ended the contract in September 2015. Its aim was to deinstitutionalise the patients and save costs by moving them to non-profit organisations. What…