News
Gates Foundation Provides $15.4 Million to Opportunity International To Help Build Microfinance Banks in Five African Nations 
PR Newswire, February 20, 2007
Opportunity International, one of the world's largest microfinance organizations, today announced it has received a $5.4 million grant and a $10 million loan from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The $15.4 million of capital will fund start-up microfinance banks to serve the poor in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as well as expansion of its banking operations in Ghana. Opportunity International operates banks or financial institutions in 28 countries and is the world's largest microfinance bank organization serving the very poor.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2007
Reaching out Aureos makes $400m bet on Africa
By Barney Jopson , Financial Times, January 22, 2007
Aureos Capital, one of the most experienced private equity groups in Africa, is aiming to raise $400m for a ground-breaking bet on the potential of smaller companies to build businesses spanning the continent, writes Barney Jopson in London.
The group, domiciled in Mauritius, is among a handful of emerging market specialists active in Africa and already runs three funds, dedicated to east, west and southern Africa, which total $140m.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2007
From Matatu to the Masai via mobile
By Paul Mason , BBC News, January 8, 2007
Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason travels through Kenya using a map of the country's mobile phone networks as his guide.
>> More Details | created on: 01/19/2007
Microvending in Kenya
By Kitty Felde, Marketplace - American Public Media, November 21, 2006
Microlending is when small amounts of money are loaned to budding entrepreneurs. MicroVENDING is when small business owners sell tiny amounts of their product. This idea is taking off in the impoverished African nation of Kenya. From the Marketplace Entreprenuership Desk, Kitty Felde reports.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
Chasing the 'base of the pyramid' 
By Marc Gunther, Fortune Magazine, November 15, 2006
Veteran cleaning-product firm SC Johnson seeds startups in the poorest parts of Africa. Socially responsible? Yes, but also good business, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
Kenya's 'Lord of the Ringtones' carves empire in African cell phone
WBCSD, October 22, 2006
In a warehouse on the outskirts of Nairobi, the "Lord of the Ringtones" holds sway over a growing cell phone service empire amid an African explosion in mobile technology. With 14 employees and a clever Middle Earth-inspired slogan, Ken Njoroge's two-year-old Cellulant firm has seized on the phenomenal surge in cell phone use and a ballooning desire for people to customize their handsets with distinctive rings.
"Mobile phones are getting more and more sophisticated," says the 31-year-old "lord," as Cellulant employees in oversized headphones, upship song snippets and ditties to customers for 82 cents (65 euro cents) a ringtone. "We've just found an untapped niche," Njoroge told AFP.
>> More Details | created on: 11/02/2006
African Governments Asked to Plough Back Cell Phone Taxes
By Kimathi Njoka, allAfrica, October 21, 2006
Telecommunications experts say mobile networks have the capacity to provide coverage to 90 per cent of the world's population by 2010.
But this could happen only if governments spend all the tax collections from telecoms industry on improving the mobile infrastructure. Speaking in Cape Town yesterday, experts urged Governments to complement mobile operators towards achieving this goal instead of watering down their efforts through ill-advised policies of subsidising rollouts of fixed-networks.
>> More Details | created on: 10/27/2006
Uganda: MFIs Want Moneylenders Regulated
By Ibrahim Kasita, allAfrica, October 8, 2006
MICRO-Finance Institutions (MFIs) have asked the Government to check the higher interest rates levied by moneylenders who have threatened the industry.
While MFIs' interest rates are between 19%-29%, moneylenders' rates are 30% and above. Money lending is legal, but requires written contracts between the lender and the borrower.
The moneylender is obliged to keep proper records of accounts. Unlike MFIs, moneylenders do not require application, processing, monitoring and insurance fees or compulsory savings, yet MFIs require that.
>> More Details | created on: 10/13/2006
Fertile Ground: Hedge Founds Travel to Africa
By Alistair MacDonald, The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2006
For 20 years, whenever Congolese businessman Kalaa Mpinga wanted to finance projects in sub-Saharan Africa, he would turn to agencies like the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. Now, rather than international development agencies, two hedge funds -- Lansdowne Partners Ltd. and Marshall Wace LLP -- are among his biggest investors. Together, they own more than 12% of the company he heads, Mwana Africa PLC.
"Today, you will get far more results by going to the market and raising your finance that way," says Mr. Mpinga, chief executive of Mwana Africa, a mining company that went public on the London Stock Exchange last year, after obtaining the listing of a rival African miner it acquired.
>> More Details | created on: 10/13/2006
Africa closes tech gap with flashy phones
News.com, September 26, 2006
Rickety minibus taxis weave between corrugated iron shacks, dodging street hawkers and the odd scrawny child with trousers gaping at the knee.
Alexandra is one of South Africa's roughest townships, and yet you can switch on your laptop there, slide in a data card and access your e-mail in seconds using the world's most advanced commercial wireless technology. About a decade after mobile phones started to spread across the poorest continent, trailing Europe by several years, wireless technology in major cities is catching up with that in the West.
>> More Details | created on: 09/29/2006
Botswana: Business Place Gaborone to Boost SMMEs
By Kabo Mokgoabone, allAfrica, September 25, 2006
Lack of management skills by many of Botswana's Small to Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) could be a thing of the past, as the newly established Business Place (Centre) Gaborone will endeavour to address these shortfalls.
The Business Place is the brainchild of Investec Asset Management and a collaboration of other local companies. Investec muted the idea in 2004 in collaboration with Barloworld Botswana, Motor Centre Group, the University of Botswana (UB), the University of Botswana Foundation, Kgalagadi Beverages Trust, Department of Youth and Culture and CEDA. The Managing Director of Investec Asset Management Botswana, Martinus Seboni, explained that while government agencies like CEDA and NDB have sponsored SMME projects, they go out of business within 18 to 36 months of operation.
>> More Details | created on: 09/29/2006
Uganda to Cap Interest Rates Charged By Microfinance Institutions
Microcapital, September 20, 2006
The Ugandan government capped the interest rate that microfinance institutions may charge. According to New Vision Kampala, the new rule sets rates at or below inflation, which stood at 8.1% in 2005. Microfinance institutions in Uganda currently lend at rates of 18 to 100 percent.
Interest rate caps tend to reduce the supply of microcredit, as fewer microfinance institutions enter the industry and existing ones scale back operations, reports Eric Duflos of The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). Uganda’s President, however, stated August 7, 2006 that “the aim of microfinance is to boost the productivity of the rural poor rather than turn a profit”. Consistent with that belief, he recently criticized the “high interest rates” in the country (MicroCapital Blog: August 24, 2006).
>> More Details | created on: 09/22/2006
The flicker of a brighter future
The Economist, September 7, 2006
Once again, Africa is listed as the most difficult place in the world to do business. So why are some businessmen happy to be there?
The prospect of investing in sub-Saharan Africa can cause businessmen to break out in a cold sweat. The region is often seen as a corporate graveyard of small, impossibly difficult markets, where war, famine, AIDS and disaster are always lurking. This week an annual World Bank study once again named Africa as the most difficult region in which to do business. But not everyone sees it like that. Graham Mackay, who runs SABMiller, the world's second-largest brewer, has said that “if there was any more of Africa, we'd be investing in it.”
>> More Details | created on: 09/29/2006
Nigeria: Government, Not Business, Can Deliver Services - Oxfam
allAfrica, September 3, 2006
Only governments can effectively deliver services like health and education to the poorest, development group Oxfam said in a report yesterday critical of groups like the World Bank for hindering poverty programs by pushing private-sector solutions.
The report comes a year after industrial nations pledged to double aid to poor countries by 2010, and donors and development groups look closer at how aid can be made more effective in fighting poverty.
"Only governments can reach the scale necessary to provide universal access to services that are free or heavily subsidized for poor people and geared to the needs of all citizens," Oxfam said in a 124-page report.
Oxfam said its conclusions are based on an essential services index that ranks countries according to child survival rates, schooling, access to safe water, and access to sanitation. It compared their performance with per capital national income.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Let there be light…
WDCSD, August 31, 2006
Africa Investor, 31 August 2006 - Supplying Africa with electricity is a bit like rowing a boat against the tide. You put in a lot of effort, it feels like you’re going somewhere, but when you look up you find the boat has lost ground. Despite some mega-projects on the horizon and billions of dollars expected to be spent on new generating capacity, the absolute number of people without electricity in Africa will continue to rise for at least the next 15 to 20 years. Some time around 2025 new capacity construction will catch up with population growth.
That is the scenario painted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2004 World Energy Outlook, which estimates that more than half a billion people in Africa do not have access to electricity: the only major world region where the number of people without electricity exceeds those who do.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Tanzania: Bank Sets Aside $5 Million to Lend to Informal Sector
allAfrica, August 22, 2006
Standard Chartered Bank Tanzania will set aside $5 million to assist Tanzania's small and medium firms. The chief executive Hemen Shah last week told The EastAfrican that the institution had signed an agreement with PRIDE Tanzania, a small micro-provident fund, to finance the project.
He said the bank's entry into the micro-lending sector signifies its confidence in the development of the sector. "Our lending rates to the micro finance sector are very competitive. We take into consideration a number of factors ranging from the amount borrowed to the credit risk associated with the transaction," he said.
According to Mr Shah, micro finance is a specialised sector that requires special skills in terms of loan administration and follow-up of projects. "The bank has started with PRIDE Tanzania, but we are discussing with other organisations with whom we can co-operate in a similar programme," he said.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Uganda: Micro Finance Institutions Need Help
By Sarah Nakibuuka, allAfrica, August 21, 2006
Government should establish a fully-fledged Credit Reference Bureau to provide accurate information relating to the creditworthness of borrowers. What is happening today with the micro-finance institutions is debt collection through court bailiffs and not credit referencing. Adequate information on credit referencing works to reduce the number and amounts of bad loans underwritten by lenders, thereby reducing the cost of borrowing and increasing the amount of well-underwritten loans. The World Development Report (WDR 2005) shows that information on credit history can reduce the processing time, costs, and default rates by more than 25%.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Entrepreneur has quixotic goal of wiring Rwanda
By Christopher Rhoads, The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2006
MOUNT KARISIMBI, Rwanda -- Greg Wyler, an American tech entrepreneur, dreams of bringing the Internet to this troubled country. There are a few hurdles. One is a battered communications tower atop this 14,787-foot volcanic peak. The air is too thin for helicopters to transport the several tons of equipment needed for repairs. Instead, it has to go by hand.
One recent morning, as mist covered the mountain, a group of 20 Rwandans lugged a 1,300-pound transformer with ropes and pulleys through deep mud. Rains had turned part of the trail into swamp. Mr. Wyler, 36 years old, was checking on their progress. He had recently hired a South African mountain-rescue company to advise on navigating the steeper sections.
"We are pushing the boundaries of technology here," Mr. Wyler said, as the muck oozed up around his knees.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
Kenyan bank to use IT to link East Africa
BusinessinAfricaonline, August 11, 2006
Nairobi - Kenyan, Tanzanian and southern Sudanese nationals would shortly begin to bank in any of the three countries when the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) completes the rollout phase of its latest computer technology, a KCB executive has said.
According to Dr Tony Githuku, the bank's technology and operations divisional director, the bank was in the process of acquiring new advanced banking software to link its subsidiaries in the three East Africa countries before the end of the year.
>> More Details | created on: 08/14/2006
Coffee, and Hope, Grow in Rwanda
By Laura Fraser, The New York Times, August 6, 2006
OVER the last dozen years, the view from Gemima Mukashyaka’s small coffee garden in the lush emerald-green hills of southwestern Rwanda has changed. In 1994, after the genocide that killed 800,000 people, it was a site of devastation, chaos and abandonment. Five years ago, when worldwide coffee prices spiraled downward, her neighbors in the densely populated region near Butare were uprooting their coffee trees and planting quick-growing food crops to survive.
But today, there’s a clean coffee processing station nearby, and sprouted around it are two restaurants, a pharmacy, a bank, six hair salons, and just last week, the village’s first Internet cafe.
>> More Details | created on: 08/08/2006
Solar Power Brings Relief to Villagers
WBCSD, August 5, 2006
IPS, 5 August 2006 - Bishop Kodji, a small fishing and canoe carving island in the Atlantic Ocean off Nigeria's sprawling commercial hub of Lagos, has become the first village to be electrified under the Lagos State government's pilot solar energy project.
Before setting up the project, the village, with a population of 5,000, had not known electricity since its existence.
>> More Details | created on: 08/14/2006
Poverty-stricken Rwanda puts its faith and future into the wide wired world
By Xan Rice, The Guardian, August 1, 2006
Office workers talking over Skype. Fibre-optic cable snaking hundreds of miles underground and to the top of a 4,500-metre volcano. Paperless cabinet meetings with every minister using a laptop. This may sound like an advanced western country rather than a tiny, poor African state. Yet this is Rwanda, now in the midst of an extraordinary development plan to leap into the 21st century.
More "mobile in every pocket" than "chicken in every pot", the Vision 2020 project aims to rapidly transform a depressed agricultural economy into one driven by information communications and technology (ICT). If it works, the percentage of Rwanda's workforce involved in farming will drop from 90% to 50% in 15 years. By then the country should be the regional ICT hub - a kind of Singapore of the Great Lakes.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
Nanotech debate 'must involve poor communities'
By Tawanda Majoni, SciDev.Net, July 24, 2006
[HARARE] Poor communities must be involved in debates about whether nanotechnologies can contribute to social and economic development, said delegates at a series of meetings in Zimbabwe this month.
The last of the three 'nano-dialogues' — attended by Zimbabwean scientists and representatives of local communities — took place on 22 July in Harare.
>> More Details | created on: 07/27/2006
African Farmers try KickStarting Their Farms
npr, July 22, 2006
KickStart is a company hoping to help lift African farmers out of poverty by selling them simple water pumps for their crops. Scott Simon talks with Martin Fisher, co-founder of the non-profit company.
>> More Details | created on: 07/24/2006
South Africa: More Action Needed By Business in South Africa On Poverty
By Futhi Mtoba, July 19, 2006
Futhi Mtoba, Chairman of Deloitte Southern Africa, provides a look at where the corporate responsibility movement stands in South Africa, particularly as it relates to poverty alleviation. According to Mtoba, there is general understanding, and even genuine desire on the part of business to "do something", but for various reasons implementation is lacking. One solution for increasing momentum, says Mtoba, is to develop better methods of measuring the impact on the ground resulting from good business practices and programs. Otherwise, "it remains simply an exercise in throwing money at the problem" without leading to meaningful change in society.
>> More Details | created on: 08/08/2006
Philips keen on SADC region factory
Fin24, July 18, 2006
Johannesburg - Electronics giant Philips said on Tuesday that it hoped to build a compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) assembly factory in the SADC region - the first of its kind in Africa.
"Millions of Southern Africans living in both rural and urban households do not have access to electricity, and those that do often struggle to afford quality lighting. Instead, they rely on hazardous paraffin, kerosene or candles which are not only major pollutants, but also often lead to fires," the statement said.
>> More Details | created on: 07/24/2006
SA can show way in selling to new world
By Steven Burgess, Business Day, July 18, 2006
SIXTY-ONE countries comprising about 40% of humankind are officially classified as low-income countries (LICs) by the World Bank (2005). While many of these countries were ignored as viable destinations for business previously, today the globalisation of markets has focused attention on these “base of the pyramid” countries. Why would anyone be interested in a group of countries in which per capita gross national income is below $800 a year? The answer is growth and market saturation. LICs, and low-income segments in middle-income countries, are large, fast-growing, unsaturated markets that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually
>> More Details | created on: 07/20/2006
Southern Africa: Conference to Explore Affordable Lighting for the SADC
By Thapelo Sakoana, allAfrica, July 18, 2006
In a quest to give access to affordable lighting to millions of households in Southern Africa, an electronics company will host a conference to explore the feasibility of building a factory to manufacture Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) in the region.
This because the majority of citizens in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region do not have access to electricity while those who use it "still struggle to afford quality lighting".
>> More Details | created on: 07/24/2006
Fighting Poverty With $2-a-Day Jobs
By Daniel Gross, The New York Times, July 16, 2006
JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ, a veteran of the Rockefeller Foundation and a former consultant to the World Bank, talks enthusiastically about the development of a company in Africa where some 2,000 women earn, on average, $1.80 a day producing antimalarial bed netting. With the assistance of a $350,000 loan from an American investor, the business started making the nets nearly three years ago and is likely to add 1,000 more jobs within the next year.
>> More Details | created on: 07/17/2006
Namibia: Cellphones Can Reverse Poverty
By Prof. Monish Gunawardana, allAfrica, July 14, 2006
Recently, Warren Buffet, the world's second richest businessperson, adding US$31 billion to Bill Gate's Foundation, did not forget to say: "A market system has not worked in terms of poor people." It is true. The third world nations are struggling in a highly volatile global market system that was promoted by the first world. It focuses on profits but not the welfare of the poor. As China and India did it, let us use this system for our benefit. Let us arm our people with the best technological tools to reverse the poverty and retain the global competitiveness. Today, our topic is "cellphone", which is a status symbol for the rich, but an anti-poverty weapon for the poor.
>> More Details | created on: 08/03/2006
UN and Microsoft for small business in Africa
Bloomberg, July 12, 2006
Cape Town and Seattle - Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, and the UN are forming a partnership to supply information technology (IT) and other support to small businesses in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
UN Tourism Agency Teams Up With Microsoft to Boost African Tourism
allAfrica.com, July 12, 2006
The United Nations tourism agency has teamed up with Microsoft to use information technology to improve the industry's competitiveness and quality in developing countries, especially in Africa which at present accounts for only 4 per cent of international tourism.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
Rwanda: Rural Areas to Access Solar Energy
By Grace Mugabe, allAfrica.com, July 10, 2006
The president of Solar Energy Africa, John Ssemanda, has said that the organization has an ambitious project of accessing solar energy to rural areas to boost economic development.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
In War-Torn Congo, Going Wireless to Reach Home
By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post, July 9, 2006
KINSHASA, Congo -- Until not long ago, if Zadhe Iyombe wanted to talk to his mother, he had to make the eight-day boat trip up the Congo River to the jungle town where he was raised. In a country with almost no roads, mail or telephone system and a grisly guerrilla war raging, making that exhausting and dangerous trip was about the only way he could find out if his 59-year-old mother was still alive.
>> More Details | created on: 07/10/2006
Let business lift Africa out of poverty
By Jon Cronin, BBC News, July 4, 2006
According to Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of Anglo American, poverty in Africa cannot be addressed "simply by aid". "The long term solution has to be to grow business, and I think people are now recognising that," he says.
"We employ very large numbers of people in Africa. We pay those people in total something in the region of $3bn, that's more than we pay our shareholders. Of course, as a business you have to make money. But it doesn't mean there aren't benefits for other people involved, for government, for employees, for suppliers and so on."
>> More Details | created on: 07/31/2006
Nigeria: FG to Build Biogas Plants to Convert Cow Dung to Fertilizer
By Emmanuel Ulayi, allAfrica.com, July 3, 2006
The federal government is to construct two pilot biogas plants for the conversion of abattoir wastes to biogas and organic fertilizer in Oyo and Kano states. The project, which would involve the use of an appropriate technology for treating abattoir waste, will also be implemented through public/ private partnership.
In addition to the production of a cheap source of domestic cooking gas and organic fertilizer, the plant will generate employment opportunities and mitigate the effects of green house gasses.
>> More Details | created on: 07/05/2006
Small generator aims to empower Africans - Foot-powered device test-runs in Rwanda
By Laurie Goering, Chicago Tribune, July 3, 2006
MUSHERI CENTER, Rwanda -- In this remote village of dirt-floor homes, recharging a cell phone has long meant bicycling 25 miles to the nearest town with power, or 4 miles to the closest charged-up car battery.
So the excitement was palpable when aid workers showed up recently with the first test model of what might prove to be an energy revolution for Africa: the Weza, a foot-pedal power generator.
>> More Details | created on: 07/05/2006
Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria
By Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, June 29, 2006
BELULUANE, Mozambique — With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminum smelter amid the cornfields here.
What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill — 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
>> More Details | created on: 06/30/2006
Uganda: USAID Pushes for Rural Mobile Banks
By D. Livingstone Ssempijja, allAfrica.com, June 28, 2006
BANKING institutions have been urged to start rural mobile banking services to attract more people into the banking industry and help the country instil a savings culture; much lacking in Uganda.
The service that involves making banking transactions through a combination of banking technologies such as Point of Sales Services, Automated Teller Machines, Mini-ATMs (Movable ATMs) and mobile phones does not necessarily require bankers to visit banks.
>> More Details | created on: 06/30/2006
South Africa: Branson Raises Flag for 'Fleeced SA Consumers'
By Rob Rose, Business Day, June 27, 2006
VIRGIN founder Richard Branson has launched an assault on the second high-fee industry in SA within a week -- ploughing R120m into launching the cheapest credit card in SA yesterday and setting his sights on a full-blown financial services business.
>> More Details | created on: 07/31/2006
How to venture into the low income market
By Issa Sikiti da Silva, Bizcommunity.com, June 26, 2006
Due to a myriad of preconceived judgments and other socio-political misconceptions, most marketers have often "omitted" the low income market or "bottom of the pyramid markets" in their business lists. But delegates attending the one-day conference, entitled 'Understanding the South African Consumer Markets and its Segments' held at GIBS last week, were told that the low income market is currently one of the most fascinating markets in the South African business scene.
>> More Details | created on: 07/06/2006
The Village Phone Comes to Rwanda
By Geoffrey Kamali, allAfrica.com, June 26, 2006
The Grameen Foundation of USA, in collaboration with MTN Rwanda, is re-energising its Village Phone scheme to bring mobile telephony to rural communities where no telecom services have existed before.
After resounding success in Bangladesh and recently in Uganda, the scheme was last week launched in Gashora, Bugesera in Rwanda on a pilot basis.
>> More Details | created on: 06/30/2006
The New Frontlines of Capitalism: Microcredit Comes to Borguindé
By Nathalie Boittin, The Globalist, June 22, 2006
The success of the Grameen Bank's microcredit model in Bangladesh has spawned similar programs throughout the world. The West African state of Burkina Faso is one such example. Peace Corps volunteer Nathalie Boittin offers her first-hand experience of some of the achievements and difficulties in setting up a system of microcredit loans among a group of women in Borguindé.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
MTN takes internet to poor
INet-Bridge, June 21, 2006
An initiative to provide convenient internet connectivity as well as access to a wealth of education information via a bespoke online portal to some of the country's poorest communities was launched on Wednesday by mobile services operator MTN.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
New Mobile Phone Program to Bring Economic Lifeline to Rural Rwanda
CSRWire, June 14, 2006
Washington, DC, June 14, 2006 – With the nearest telephone sometimes six miles away, a mobile phone is more than just a means of communication for rural communities in Rwanda; it is an economic lifeline. To help spur greater telecommunications access for villagers, Grameen Foundation, a global non-profit organization that combines microfinance with new technologies to empower the world’s poorest people, and mobile network operator, MTN Rwanda, are launching an innovative new venture: Village Phone Rwanda. Through its signature product, Tel’imbere, Village Phone Rwanda will provide affordable telephone access in places where there is no access to public communications and where power supplies are either unreliable or nonexistent.
>> More Details | created on: 06/15/2006
IFC Supports Madagascar’s SME Sector with First-of-Its-Kind Investment
IFC Press Release, June 13, 2006
Antananarivo, Madagascar / Washington, D.C., June 13, 2006—The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, will provide joint risk-sharing with the Republic of Madagascar and two local banks to make loans available to owners of small and medium enterprises. This is the first joint investment under the International Development Association/IFC Pilot Program for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 06/27/2006
Ghana: Mobile Phone Prospects Attract More Investments to Ghana
By Amos Safo, allAfrica.com, June 12, 2006
After two previous attempts to set up mobile phone business in Ghana, MTN, Africa's biggest telecommunications provider has finally entered the Ghanaian market through a merger with Investcom, the parent company of Scancom Ghana Ltd. owners of Areeba, Ghana's biggest mobile phone provider.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
A model businessman
By Marisa Berndsen , Business in Africa, June 9, 2006
African leaders are seeking Iqbal Survé’s counsel – his company, Sekunjalo Investments, has been central to the facilitation of a yet to be announced $20bn infrastructure project in a neighbouring country.
Walk out of a one-and-a-half hour discussion with Dr Iqbal Survé, who describes himself as a “medical doctor, philanthropist and social entrepreneur” and you will disregard all the skeptics and believe that there is hope for Africa to eradicate poverty, and not in our grandchildren’s lifetime, but in our lifetime.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
Botswana: Housing for Poverty Alleviation
By Onalenna Modikwa & Selebi-Phikwe, Mmegi/The Reporter, June 6, 2006
Phikwe Town Council has welcomed the pilot poverty alleviation and housing schemes by the Department of Housing. The programme was started in 1992 by government to facilitate economic empowerment of poor households who do not qualify for SHHA loans through employment creation, poverty alleviation and home ownership.
>> More Details | created on: 06/08/2006
R100m deal set to help SME sector
The Herald Online, June 6, 2006
STANDARD Bank and the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency, signed a R100-million agreement in Johannesburg yesterday aimed at financing established contractors in the small and medium enterprises sector.
>> More Details | created on: 06/06/2006
South Africa: Conference to Explore Potential of Research, Technology in Poverty Alleviation
By Thapelo Sakoana, allAfrica.com, June 5, 2006
More than 200 delegates will converge in Johannesburg next week, to explore how research and technology can be used to stimulate economic growth and alleviate poverty in rural communities.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
South Africa: Let 'Business Angels' Work Their Miracle
By Mark Napier, Business Day, Johannesburg, May 23, 2006
SINCE 1994, the South African government has invested significant political capital in the support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is because SMEs are recognised as key contributors to both growth and employment, contributing 30% of the country's gross domestic product and almost 70% of private-sector employment. Government intervention in this sector has included the provision of wholesale finance and nonfinancial support services. The 2005 and 2006 budgets have also given support to SMEs through the tax system, streamlining VAT procedures and raising qualifying tax thresholds for small businesses.
>> More Details | created on: 05/25/2006
Micro-credit banks give poor rich aspirations in Ghana
By Laurie Goering, Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2006
ACCRA, Ghana -- The sparkling new bank, down the street from Accra's bustling Makola market, looks like a financial institution anywhere: Six busy teller windows, a new accounts desk, air conditioning holding the steamy heat outside at bay.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
A Moneymaking Water Pump
By Ross Perlin, Time Magazine, May 21, 2006
To Martin Fisher, 48, and Nick Moon, 51, a simple pump could be the solution to poverty for millions of Africans. They're the co-founders of KickStart, a San Francisco--based nonprofit that encourages rural entrepreneurship by providing tools that Africa's poor can afford. Since the group was founded in Nairobi in 1991 under the name ApproTEC, it has developed a machine to make building blocks, a press that extracts cooking oil from seeds, a hay baler and a series of hand-operated micro-irrigation pumps. Their latest, the MoneyMaker Hip Pump, retails in Africa for $34.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
Official: Africans pay $1,800 for 1GB of data
CNN.com, May 19, 2006
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- African Internet users pay on average 90 times what Americans pay, crippling efforts by the world's poorest continent to become competitive, a senior Kenyan official said.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
Snatching prosperity from jaws of economic disaster
By Patrick Asea , The New Vision - Uganda, May 18, 2006
It is hard to question the Government’s avowed commitment to poverty eradication. Just look at the mountain of documents – Poverty Eradication Action Plans I and II, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, Plan for the Modernization of Agriculture, Background to the Budget and Sector Wide Approaches – that have been generated over the past 20 years. Yet, the shackles of poverty, backwardness and under-development seem tighter now than ever before.
The Government needs to launch an all-out attack on extreme poverty during this Kisanja. To do so, we need to acknowledge that poor people are poor because of a combination of market failures and government failures.
>> More Details | created on: 05/18/2006
How the mobile phone has given hope to a new generation of African people
By Diane Coyle , The Independent, May 18, 2006
The spread of mobile phones in Africa has been dramatic and is having dramatic effects, social and economic. The continent has seen the world's fastest growth in numbers of mobile subscribers since the late 1990s. Although it still lags other regions, an average of nine people out of 100 have a mobile subscription, up from close to zero less than a decade ago. In some countries this "penetration rate" is much higher: latest industry figures show it at 62 per cent in South Africa and 38 per cent in Botswana.
>> More Details | created on: 05/18/2006
Kenya: Small Business Gets Sh1.7bn Fund
By Wachira Kang'aru, The Nation, Nairobi, May 17, 2006
Kenya's small and medium-sized businesses can tap into a Sh1.7 billion regional fund launched by a group of local and international companies. It will be made available in loans and business development assistance through managerial training.
Dubbed Aspire Kenya, the initiative has been jointly established by GroFin, an African specialist business developer and financier, and Shell Foundation.
>> More Details | created on: 05/25/2006
Nokia rates South Africa high
Mobile Africa, May 16, 2006
Africa has one of the most highly developed mobile workforces in the world, even in the poorer and least developed countries on the continent, says Eric Anderbjork, Nokia enterprise solutions head for Middle East and Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 05/16/2006
Not a burden, but a land of opportunity
By Niall Fitzgerald, The Independent, May 16, 2006
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world where poverty has continued to rise in the last generation; 350 million Africans live on less than $1 a day. Try for just one day!
If we are to make any progress in reversing this trend, business must engage because trade stimulates investment, investment accelerates growth and growth reduces poverty. This is not to say that aid is unimportant but evidence suggests that in the long run aid does little to promote economic growth and, in some cases, has crowded out private-sector investment and propped up corrupt regimes.
>> More Details | created on: 05/18/2006
The East African Development Bank to fund private sector projects
The East African, May 15, 2006
The East African Development Bank is to start financing development programmes in partnership with the private sector. At the bank's governing council meeting held recently in Kampala, proposals to develop a variety of development finance products were unveiled.
>> More Details | created on: 05/25/2006
Kenya: Get Paid for Planting Your Own Trees
By Kimani Chegea, May 12, 2006
A group of farmers in Nanyuki have now joined the global carbon trade. They are being urged to plant trees, not for firewood , timber or electricity poles, but for absorbing excess carbon from the environment - And they are being paid for it.
Through this new concept, 45 members of Rongai Development Programme have each received Sh700 as motivation to join the trade by establishing carbon sinks (forests and tree planting projects).
>> More Details | created on: 05/12/2006
Intel CEO: Need To Speed Gains For ‘Next Billion People
Intel Press Release, May 3, 2006
The multiplying effects of computers, the Internet and education can double the reach of technology’s benefits worldwide in the next 5 years, Intel Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini said today in a speech at the World Congress on Information Technology.
>> More Details | created on: 05/08/2006
Uganda: Bwindi Telecentre Brings MDGs Fulfillment in Focus
By Edris Kisambira, allAfrica, May 1, 2006
Located at the Congo-Uganda border 500 kilometres south west of Kampala, the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) Bwindi Impenetrable National Park telecentre - a combination of conservation and technology, is making a whole lot of a difference to the endangered mountain gorillas, eco-tourists, tourist stakeholders and locals who live in and around the park.
>> More Details | created on: 06/06/2006
Connecting developing nations
By Eric Sylvers, International Herald Tribune, April 26, 2006
A pregnant woman at home alone in her remote village in Sierra Leone unexpectedly went into a difficult labor and, with no access to a doctor or medical facilities, a minor medical emergency could have taken a tragic turn. But the woman, Emma Sesay, managed to use one of the few cellphones in the village of Port Loko.
Celtel is the name of the cellphone company that provides services in her village and many others across 14 African countries, including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Madagascar.
>> More Details | created on: 04/26/2006
Six Trends Will Drive Sustainable Development, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers, April 10, 2006
Sustainable development will steadily advance over the next 10 years, with six major trends influencing industry world-wide, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, "Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, Management and Value." The challenge of creating strategies that meet immediate needs without sacrificing the needs of future generations will be driven by the growing influence of: global market forces; revisions in corporate governance; high speed innovation; large scale globalisation; evolving societal requirements and communication, the report says.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
Making the market work for the poor
By Ann Bernstein & Paul Zille , Business Day, April 6, 2006
AS a new development approach, making markets work for the poor (MMW4P) can have a big impact in SA because it is about changing the circumstances that prevent the poor from participating more effectively and extensively in the market economy.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
New environmental targets for DSM plants
Hugin News/DSM, March 26, 2006
The Nutrition Improvement Program, which focuses on the fortification of foods with vitamins and minerals in order to prevent disease and mortality due to malnutrition, is DSM's first initiative in the context of the 'Base of the Pyramid'. This is a new development in the field of sustainability to which the company will increasingly be paying attention.
>> More Details | created on: 04/04/2006
Bottled Water Big for Multinationals
By Mark Stevenson, Yahoo News, March 21, 2006
Violent protests have driven away corporate investment in desperately needed municipal water systems in developing nations. So the world's poor buy bottled water from Coke, Pepsi and other multinational companies.
>> More Details | created on: 03/30/2006
Tech a Key to Easing Poverty, Microsoft official adapts software for Third World uses
By Sara Israelsen, Deseret News, March 11, 2006
The connection between a computer and the economic stability of an African villager may seem like a stretch, but to Kevin Johnson, it's a connection he works on every day. Johnson, co-president of the Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft, spends his weeks traveling the world, trying to adapt Windows technology to the various developing countries and citizens.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
Give Africans the Blackberry -- and they will do the Job
By Dan Latendre, The Record, March 11, 2006
What do computers, cellphones and BlackBerrys have to do with eradicating extreme poverty in Africa? Quite a bit as it turns out.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
The tin-can antenna: A boon for third world
By Elisabetta Povoledo , International Herald Tribune, February 28, 2006
A physics research institute here is using a low-cost but effective tool to bolster communications in developing countries: the tin-can antenna.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Business of Giving
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
Philanthropy is flourishing as the number of super-rich people keeps growing. But the new donors are becoming much more businesslike about the way their money is used, says Matthew Bishop.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Birth of Philanthrocapitalism
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
RELATIVE to the corporate environment, we are in the 1870s. But philanthropy will increasingly come to resemble the capitalist economy, predicts Uday Khemka, a young Indian philanthropist and a director of the SUN Group investment company owned by his family.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
MTN's CSR Initiative Wins GSM Association Award
Africa News, February 17, 2006
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Grameen and Segway team up to produce micro-entrepreneurial "Slingshot"
By Erick Schonfeld, CNNmoney.com, February 16, 2006
Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Google's Big BOP Bet? Bringing Wi-Fi to Africa
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, February 9, 2006
Google
announced this week that it has selected Abuja, Nigeria as one of about seven African cities the company will fully connect with a wireless network.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Microfinance Sector Comes Under Spotlight
The Herald / All Africa Global Media via COMTEX, February 8, 2006
THE provision of an effective and appropriate regulatory and supervisory framework for microfinance institutions will see them playing a crucial role in Zimbabwe's economic transformation.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
Business Prophet
By CK Prahalad, Business Week, January 23, 2006
This article discusses how strategy guru C.K. Prahalad is changing the way CEOs think.
>> More Details | created on: 01/27/2006
All They Need is a Fair Chance to Compete
By Heather Stewart , The Observer, January 22, 2006
Hilary Benn tells Heather Stewart that, far from being the enemy, the global private sector is the one certain way that poverty can be made history.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Putting Paid to Poverty
By Al Hammond & Bill Kramer, January 17, 2006
"Putting Paid to Poverty" provides a hopeful scenario for the development of the 'base of the pyramid' over the next ten years.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
A New Way to Do Well by Doing Good
By Rachel Emma Silverman, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006
Making tiny loans to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries has long been a popular charitable cause, but it is now gaining traction as an investment.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
OSS CEO Announces Global Campaign to Deliver Intelligence to the Poor, Lifting the Bottom of the Pyramid - the Poor - With Information
Yahoo Finance, December 14, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/04/2006
Micro-Credit to Be Channeled Through Community Banks - Kpakol
Africa News, November 29, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
Can Africa Join the Investment Revolution
By Africa Business, November 29, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/09/2006
A Proposition to Eradicate Poverty
By Jesse Moore, November 11, 2005
This article takes an in depth look at the pros and cons of eradicating poverty through profit. The author notes we need to rebuke the idea that we are playing a zero-sum game and embrace the possibility that growth and poverty reduction, done right, are mutually reinforcing pursuits.
>> More Details | created on: 12/21/2005
Founder of Ebay sets up Dollars 100m microfinance aid fund
Financial Express, November 4, 2005
The Dollars 100m (Euros 84m, Pounds 56m) fund, which will be run for profit by endowment managers at Tufts University in the US, marks a growing trend among a new generation of philanthropic entrepreneurs and technology billionaires to seek market-based solutions to global poverty rather than rely solely on traditional charities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
For the Poor, Help from MBAs
By Francesca DiMeglio , Business Week Online, August 1, 2005
This article discusses how many MBAs are bringing microfinancing, business development—and eventually a consumer economy—to many impoverished Third World areas.
>> More Details | created on: 01/05/2006
Calling an End to Poverty: Mobile Phones and Development
By The Economist, July 7, 2005
Discusses how mobile phone firms have found a way to help the poor help themselves.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
What it's Like to Live on $1 a Day
The Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 2005
Discusses the day to day reality of living in poverty in Malawi.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Pennies from the poor add up to fortune
By David Ignatius, The Korea Herald, July 1, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
Trickle-Up Economics
By David Armstrong & Naazneen Karmali, Forbes.com, June 20, 2005
How low-tech, low-cost designs are helping the poorest farmers on Earth grow their way out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: There is a Surprisingly Lucrative Market in Targeting Low-Income Consumers
By Kay Johnson & Xa Nhon, Time Magazine, April 25, 2005
Identifies the lucrative market in targeting low income consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
MIT Team Seeks to Seed Developing World with $100 Laptops
By Mark Jewell, The Detroit News, April 4, 2005
Addresses MIT's efforts to bridge the digital divide by bringing laptops to children in the developing world.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: Mobile Firms Plan Cheap Handset
BBC News, February 1, 2005
An alliance of mobile phone firms has launched an ultra-cheap handset in the hope of connecting millions more customers in developing countries.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Akassa Community Development Project in Nigeria: Statoil and BP
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, January 1, 2005
Reviews how corporate social responsibility programs are helping to build and sustain livelihoods in the Niger Delta.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Senegalese Villagers are Learning to Use their Natural & Cultural Heritage to Make a Living
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, January 1, 2005
It is in partnership with the Nicolas Hulot Foundation (NHF), and the Ademe, the French agency for the environment and energy efficiency, that EDF has begun to engage in projects where local communities in developing countries take responsibility for the protection of their natural and cultural heritage, and turn it into an opportunity for growth.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
PEOPLink and CatGen: Empowering a Global Network of Artisans
By Nia Ujamaa, Digital Divide Network, December 1, 2004
Discusses the success of PEOPLink and CatGen in empowering a global network of local artisans.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Global Compact: A Business Perspective
International Chamber of Commerce, July 1, 2004
A look at the Global Compact as businesses begins to take more of a role in International Development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Deutsche Bank: microcredit development fund
Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund, May 1, 2004
The Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund was conceived as a vehicle to combine the interest, abilities, reach, and resources of Deutsche Bank and its Private Bank clients to support the long-term sustainability of microcredit institutions.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Local Entrepreneurial Skills & Sustainability in Rwanda's Community Internet Centers
DOT-COMments e-newsletter, 2004
Addresses how local entrepreneurial skills are leading to sustainable growth in Rwanda’s Community Internet Centers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Global Community Investment
Business for Social Responsibility, December 1, 2003
As companies expand their operations globally, deriving ever-larger shares of their revenues and profits from international operations, they are finding business value from expanding their community involvement activities internationally as well.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
eBusiness and Sustainable Development
Digital Europe, 2003
This article investigates the changing nature of business, society, and information technology.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Business and Poverty: Bridging the
Gap.
By Maya Forstater & Jacqui MacDonald, Resource Center for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice, December 1, 2002
This article makes the case for the role of business in poverty allieviation.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Corporate Key: Using Big Business to Fight Global Poverty
By George C. Lodge, Foreign Affairs, July 1, 2002
The authors analyze a new approach to global development addressing a global corporate alliance that brings business know-how and profit motive into play.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Balancing Sustainability with Service to the Poorest of the Poor
By Sharda Naidoo, Changemakers.net, May 1, 2002
Discusses Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) in South Africa which is one of the world's most financially successful and efficient microfinance programs, having reached a level of sustainability critical to the viability of microfinance lending.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Let's Focus on the Digital Dividend
By C.K. Prahalad, European Business Forum, 2002
Disucusses the idea that in the new economy, where access to knowledge is critical for economic success, the increasing importance of the internet will further accentuate the differences between the rich and the poor.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World
Center for International Development, 2002
A report on the current and future state of information and communication technology.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information Communications Technology for Development
UNDP Evaluation Office, September 1, 2001
Addresses Information Communication technology as a key player in development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information and Communication Technologies and Poverty
By Charles Kenny, World Bank, July 1, 2001
This article address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Revolution in a Coffee Cup: Waking the Sleeping Consumer Giant
By Kris Herbst, Changemakers.net, April 1, 2001
Dicusses how Trans-fair USA has worked with the Coffee Industry to help developing country coffee producers to build self-reliance, dignity, and control over their communities, while promoting sustainable production.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Bottom Up, Digitally Enabled Development, A Vision
By Allen Hammond & Elizabeth Jenkins, iMP Magazine, February 1, 2001
The authors address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Great Divide in the Global Village
By Bruce R. Scott, Foreign Affairs, January 1, 2001
Robust growth depends on a strong state that can enforce laws, yet many impoverished countries lack effective governance. And by strictly limiting immigration, rich countries deny the world's poor a chance to vote with their feet.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Improving Health, Fighting Poverty: The Role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
The Exchange, 2001
Addresses the power of technology in alleviating poverty but the risk of marginalizing the poor through this process.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Alleviating Poverty Through Technology
By Muhammad Yunus, Science Magazine, October 1, 1998
This article discusses ways of alleviating poverty through the spread of technology to the developing worlds.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Academic Research
Farm Productivity and Market Structure: Evidence from Cotton Reforms in Zambia
By Irene Brambilla & Guido Porto, Yale Working Papers on Economic Applications and Policy Discussion Paper No. 2 , July, 2005
This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that were repaid at the time of harvest. There are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a failure of the outgrower scheme, and a subsequent period of success of the scheme. Our findings indicate that the reforms led to interesting dynamics in cotton farming. During the phase of failure, farmers were pushed back into subsistence and productivity in cotton declined. With the improvement of the outgrower scheme of later years, farmers devoted larger shares of land to cash crops, and farm productivity significantly increased.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Is Private Education Good for the Poor?
By James Tooley, Working Paper from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (England), June 25, 2005
Private education is often assumed to be concerned only with serving the elite or middle classes, not the poor. And unregistered or unrecognised private schools are thought to be of the lowest.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Microcredit in Sub-Saharan Africa
By Terry F. Buss, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 7, No. 1; , June, 2005
The stark reality is that most poor people in the world still lack access to sustainable financial services, whether it is savings, credit, or insurance. The great challenge before us is to address the constraints that exclude people from full participation in the financial sector. The International Year of Microcredit offers a pivotal opportunity for the international community to engage in a shared commitment to meet this challenge.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Informal Finance for Private Sector Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
By Ernest Aryeetey, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 7, No. 1; , June, 2005
Discusses what can be done to make informal finance and microfinance suitable for financing growing small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Outcomes of an Ethiopian Microfinance Program and Management Actions to Improve Services
By Shannon Doocy & Dan Norell, et al, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 7, No. 1; , June, 2005
This paper examines the impact of participation in an Ethiopian microfinance program on indicators of socioeconomic status including wealth, income, and home or land ownership.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
South African Pro-poor Microfinance Institutions
By Ted Baumann, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 7, No. 1; , June, 2005
This article compares the performance of selected South African microcredit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have a poverty-alleviation focus against various benchmarks drawn from the MicroBanking Bulletin. Donors, governments, and many analysts regard sustainability as the benchmark of microfinance institutions’ (MFIs) performance.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Microcredit, Social Capital, and Politics: The Case of a Small Rural Town--Gossas, Senegal
By Jainabah M.L. Kah & Dana L. Olds, et al, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 7, No. 1; , June, 2005
Through an exploratory approach, we studied the evolution, sustainability, and management of ten microcredit institutions located in Gossas, a small town in Senegal, Sub-Saharan Africa. Prevailing ideas about social capital, in the form of social relationships within and between microcredit institutions and financing NGOs, donors, and governments, are examined using both rational choice and Marxist social capital theories to highlight the social struggles in social capital.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Dynamic Transformations for Base-of-the-Pyramid Market Clusters.
By Eric J Arnould & Jakki J. Mohr, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, June 1, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
At the Bottom of the Pyramid: Responsible Design for Responsible Business
By Nirmal Sethia, Design Managment Review, June 1, 2005
In this article, Nirmal Sethia, a professor of management and director of the Center for Business and Design in the College of Business Administration at California State Polytechnic University, in Pomona, calls our attention to what he calls "a pressing business responsibility that is a significant new business opportunity." The opportunity he refers to is what he calls "the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)-almost four billion people, or nearly two-thirds of humanity, who live at the bottom of the economic pyramid, with a vast majority of them struggling to survive on less than two dollars a day."
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Globalization and Complementary Policies: Poverty Impacts in Rural Zambia
By Jorge F. Balat & Guido Porto, NBER Working Paper No. W11175 , March, 2005
In this paper, we have two main objectives: to investigate the links between globalization and poverty observed in Zambia during the 1990s, and to explore the poverty impacts of non-traditional export growth.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
New Strategies for Consumer Goods
By Peter D. Haden & Olivier Sibony, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, December, 2004 (Subscription Required)
Most consumer goods companies can still improve some of their operations, but a few of them will look for innovative new strategies, such as outsourcing production, building new service businesses, or developing neglected product categories.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Impact of Microfinance Programs on Children's Education: Do the Gender of the Borrower and the Delivery Model Matter?
By Nathalie Halvoet, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 6, No. 2; , December, 2004
This article highlights the effects particular features of microfinance programs have on childhood education. Using data from a South India household survey, the article examines how microfinance impacts schooling and literacy, how credit enters the household, and who brings it in.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
Lessons from the Field: An Overview of the Current Uses of Information and Communication Technologies for Development
By John Paul & Robert Katz, WRI Paper, November, 2004
An overview of the digital divide that effects many in the developing world and highlights many of the projects that are attempting to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to bridge this divide
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Food Aid for Market Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
By Awudu Abdulai & Christopher B. Barrett, March, 2004
This study explores how food aid might be used for domestic food market development to facilitate poverty alleviation and economic growth.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Pharma's Emerging Opportunity
By Farhad Riahi, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 (Subscription Required)
Focusing on the diversity within emerging markets can help pharma companies serve them profitably.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Small and Medium Enterprises, Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
By Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Thorsten Beck, et al, December, 2003
This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 76 countr
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Challenges to Sida's Support to Private Sector Development: Making Markets Work for the Poor
Sida Provisional Edition, October, 2003
The document forms a background to Sida's action for private sector development by 1. Taking a stand in the overriding objectives and values underlying Swedish development assistance; 2. Explains how private sector development can be an effective instrume
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Factors Influencing Women Entrepreneurs of NGOs in India
By Femida Handy & Meenaz Kassam, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, July 7, 2003 (Vol. 13, Issue 2)
This article examines women entrepreneurs in the nonprofit sector in India to determine which factors influence such self-selection.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Economic Motors for Poverty Reduction in Madagascar
By Paul Dorosh & Steven Haggblade, Cornell Food and Nutrition Working Paper No. 144 , May, 2003
This study aims to evaluate the effect of four investments to achieve pro-poor economic growth: 1. Increase in agricultural productivity of rice and cassava; 2. Investments in roads that lead to a reduction of marketing costs; 3. Increase in private investments in the Free Trade Zone; 4. Increase of investments in tourism.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
How Businesses can Combat Global Disease
By Rajat K. Gupta & Lynn Taliento, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
The global health outlook is bleak. In 2002, more than six million people—most of them in poor countries—died from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria (exhibit). These three diseases, plus a handful of others, have crippled economic growth and progress in developing countries. This article thus discusses how and why MNCs should be involved in controlling global epidemics.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Brand Building in Emerging Markets
By Gilberto Duarte de Abreu Filho & Nicola Calicchio, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
Brand-name products will always capture their share of affluent consumers. But in the low end of emerging markets, companies should take their cues from local competitors: keep local managers in place, adhere to local standards of quality, and maintain the autonomy—and the cost efficiency—of local operations.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
How Corporations and Environmental Groups Cooperate: Assessing Cross Sector Alliances and Collaborations
By Dennis A. Rondinelli & Ted London, Academy of Management Executive, 2003 (Vol. 17 No. 1, 2003)
Gives a set of strategic criteria for executives who are interested in participating in more intensive cross-sector collaborations on environmental issues with their nonprofit counterparts
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The Great Leap: Driving Innovation from the Base of the Pyramid
By Hart, Stu & Christensen, Clayton, MIT Sloan Management Review, September, 2002 (Fall 2002)
The authors illustrate their point of how and when BOP can be successful with examples of companies that are already profitably disrupting such industries as telecommunications, consumer electronics and energy production.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
CARE's Mata Masu Dubara (Women on the Move) Program in Niger: Successful Financial Intermediation in the Rural Sahel
By William J. Grant & Hugh C. Allen, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 4, No. 2; , September 1, 2002
This article examines the nature of markets for rural financial services in the Sahel and the characteristics of the MMD model that respond so well to that market. It also reviews the limitations of the model, and some of the adaptations that CARE has introduced to successfully replicate the program in numerous other countries in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
Why do the Poor and the Less-Educated Pay More for Long-Distance Calls?
By Hausman, Jerry A. & Sidak, J. Gregory, January 25, 2002
The paper documents that poor and less-educated customers pay more for long-distance phone calls because these customers are more apt to pay the message toll service (MTS) rates and/or other higher rates.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
By C.K. Prahalad & Stuart L. Hart, Strategy+Business, January, 2002 (Issue 26, First Quarter 2002)
Dispells some of the assumptions regarding selling to the poor and discusses how companies can both maximize their profits and help the poor
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Do Retail Brands Travel?
By Peter N. Child & Suzanne Heywood, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 (Subscription Required)
Retail chains have found that while they can hang out their signs anywhere, consumers respond differently in every country. Understanding those differences is the key to building a successful retail brand across borders. A survey of 40 retail grocery and clothing brands in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom shows the importance of tailoring a brand's image to each national market.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Vaccines Where They're Needed
By Amie Batson & Matthias M. Bekier, McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 (Subscription Required )
The development of vaccines for these diseases is usually a risky and unprofitable enterprise for pharmaceuticals companies. Thus, by assuming some of the risks borne by the makers of vaccines, governments and international organizations could reduce the cost of bringing them to market.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Do the Poor Pay More? An Empirical Investigation of Price Dispersion in Food Retailing
By Hayes, Lashawn Richburg, Princeton Dept of Econ., Industrial Relations Working Paper, November 7, 2000 (No. 446)
The paper gives mixed research on the question of whether prices are higher in poor, urban neighborhoods.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Poverty, Inequality and Growth in Zambia during the 1990s
By Neil A. Mcculloch & Bob Baulch, IDS Working Paper No. 114 , August, 2000
Our study finds a dramatic increase in poverty and inequality in urban areas between 1991 and 1996 due to stabilisation, the removal of maize meal subsidies, and job losses resulting from trade liberalisation and the privatisation programme. Between 1996 and 1998, despite economic recovery at the national level, the reduction in urban poverty and inequality has been small.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Financial Services for the Urban Poor: South Africa's E Plan
By Paulson, Jo Ann & McAndrews, James, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, November 30, 1999 (No. 2016)
Standard Bank of South Africa's innovative E Bank program demonstrates how a commercial bank can use market information to bundle services needed by the urban poor - and valued by the poorer clients to justify a fee high enough to cover costs.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The Microcredit Summit's Challenge: Working Toward Institutional Financial Self-Sufficiency While Maintaining a Commitment to Serving the Poorest Families
By David S. Gibbons & Jennifer W. Meehan, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 1, No. 1; , September, 1999
Cost-effective identification of the poor and the poorest women is essential to maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of providing microfinance services to them. If the service is not exclusively for the poor and the poorest, it should be operated separately for them to minimize leakage to the nonpoor.
>> More Details | created on: 01/25/2006
Food for West Africa
By Claudio Aspesi & Bernard Loyd, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 1998 (Subscription Required )
West Africa uses scarce resources to import food. Western companies can now play a big role either through direct investment or via alliances. A market of 225 million people.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Developing Customers Before Products
By Robert J. Davis & Shinichi Ueyama, McKinsey Quarterly, 1996 (Subscription Required )
To increase their sales growth and profitability, some companies are beginning to develop customers before products. Adept at identifying and meeting unmet as well as latent demand, these companies can almost guarantee a profitable market prior to making substantial investments in a new product.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Cases
Quantifying Heineken's economic impact in Sierra Leone
WBCSD, February 2, 2007
A new economic impact assessment (EIA) model was developed and tested in Sierra Leone to quantify both direct and indirect impacts of a foreign company on the local economy.
The Dutch National Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO) and Heineken International commissioned Triple Value Strategy Consulting and InReturn to develop an economic impact assessment model and test the model on the Heineken operating company, Sierra Leone Brewery.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2007
Electrifying South Africa: Eskom
WBCSD, April 27, 2006
A key sustainable development issue is access to essential services for improved quality of life, including improved health services, clean water, adequate food and modern energy. Electricity plays a key role in delivering all these services. It underpins the economic and social development of many countries, and provides the support infrastructure for such development to occur. Therefore, for any nation or region to move forward and become competitive in the global market, providing reliable and affordable electricity is crucial.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
The Mogalakwena HP i-community: Hewlett-Packard
WBCSD, July 5, 2005
Despite the enormous worldwide impact of the Internet, more than 90% of the world’s population has never used the technology and the “digital divide” between the developed and developing nations is growing. Hewlett-Packard's Mogalakwena i-community in South Africa seeks to bridge that divide.
Through public-private partnerships, the HP Mogalakwena i-community aims to turn the region into a thriving, self-sustaining economy where access to technology permanently improves the livelihoods of the population by raising literacy rates, creating income, providing access to government services, education and health care, and opening new markets.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
The Mogalakwena HP i-community: Hewlett-Packard
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, July 5, 2005
Despite the enormous worldwide impact of the Internet, more than 90% of the world’s population has never used the technology and the “digital divide” between the developed and developing nations is growing. Hewlett-Packard's Mogalakwena i-community in South Africa seeks to bridge that divide.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Access to Electricity program eases poverty: ABB
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, March 1, 2005
ABB’s Access to Electricity program is designed to promote sustainable economic, environmental and social development in poor communities and is yielding its first concrete results in a remote village in southern Tanzania.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Empowering supply chains: Anglo American’s Mondi Recycling
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, February 25, 2005
Mondi Recycling, the biggest paper recycler in South Africa, feels it has the ability to create employment and sustain livelihoods in its operational areas.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Solar Energy in Rural South Africa
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No. UVA-E-0145-SSRN, 2005
This case describes Solar Electric Light Fund's pilot project to deliver solar-energy units to a rural, nonelectrified village in the Maphephethe region of South Africa. What appears to be an innocuous project with positive social dimensions ends up causing social stratification in the village's poorer class. The case presents students with some interesting ethical dilemmas as traditional community values of equity and social class are challenged by an attempt to improve living standards. It may also be taught as an environmental-ethics case concerning alternative-energy options (see also "SELF (A)" [UVA-E-0112] and "SELF (B)" [UVA-E-0113]).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program A
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0162-SSRN , 2005
Eskom, a South African electric-utility company, is currently spending $400 million annually (roughly 30 percent of its annual profits) to implement a national social-initiative project. This project is a countrywide infrastructure-development program to provide electricity to the citizens of South Africa, who were often denied access to basic services under apartheid; thus, the company is hoping to fulfill its goal of becoming a "model corporate citizen."
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program B
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0163-SSRN , 2005
After Eskom implemented a viable plan for providing electricity to more than 1.75 million South African households, many of its customers failed to pay for service, which resulted in a debt of approximately $400 million by 1997. This negative consumer behavior, however, was not necessarily unjustified, as South Africa's black citizens had historically used consumer boycotts as a means of protest against the apartheid state. Consequently, the country's consumer base had evolved in an environment where nonpayment was often seen as a social norm rather than negative behavior. Recognizing that consumers' behavior was the result of living under an oppressive regime, Eskom needed to address this seemingly intractable situation. See also the A, C, D, and E cases (E-0162, E-0164, E-0165, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program C
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0164-SSRN , 2005
Eskom had committed to spending approximately $400 million annually to provide 1.75 million South African households with electricity by 2000. The company had to forfeit an additional $300 million because of consumers' nonpayment for service. Moreover, the company also faced rising operational costs as a result of consumers' illegally tampering with their electrical connections. In fact, these costs had increased to such an extent that annual costs were higher than annual sales in many of the areas Eskom served. This illegal behavior, however, had evolved under an oppressive regime that forced many consumers to steal from the existing infrastructure in order to access basic services. Following the end of apartheid, Eskom hoped to receive an adequate return on its investments in the electrification program. See also the A, B, D, and E cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0165, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program D
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0165-SSRN , 2005
The D case concerns Eskom's commitment to provide employment in rural areas by training residents to work on local electrification projects. The company discovers, however, that its employees, for a small fee, often help customers make illegal connections to power lines, thus avoiding payment for service. In some communities, as much as 80 percent of the electricity is illegally obtained. How should Eskom deal with this problem? See also the A, B, C, and E cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0164, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program E
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0166-SSRN , 2005
Eskom produces the world's cheapest electricity by using coal-fired plants, most of which have not been retrofitted to meet World Bank standards. Moreover, most South Africans without electricity burn wood, which creates even more air pollution than coal. Should Eskom retrofit its coal-fired facilities and raise the price of electricity or continue to expand its inexpensive electrification program? See also the A, B, C, and D cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0164, and E-0165).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
The Volta River Project
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0161-SSRN, 2005
In 1998, Ghana was considering new ways to generate electricity to solve the recurring problem of power shortages due to droughts. This case discusses the Volta River Project, which was conceived by Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of Ghana. Built in 1963, the Volta River Dam was a joint project between Ghana and Valco, a multinational aluminum company that was to be the largest consumer of the dam's electricity. Various difficulties, including repeated droughts and a long-term low negotiated price for Valco's electricity, have created a shortage of electricity in Ghana. The case poses the following question for students: What is the best long-term solution - should Ghana build another dam or develop other solutions to this recurring problem?
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Serving the Poor: Do Embedded Ties Matter?
By Pablo Sánchez, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez & Joan Enric Ricart , IESE Business School, January 1, 2005
In the past, the 4.6 billion people living in poverty were considered anything but a market. Recently, however, several authors have suggested that by stimulating commerce and development in low-income segments, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable and inclusive world. In order to succeed at this challenging goal, companies need not only to innovate strategies, business models and products, but also to better understand the market and local customer needs.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Helping small-scale pyrethrum farmers in Kenya: SC Johnson
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, December 15, 2004
A unique partnership between SC Johnson, the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya and ApproTEC is helping Kenyan farmers to improve their livelihoods by efficiently farming pyrethrum, a unique daisy that is the source of a naturally occuring insecticide.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
A sustainable livelihoods approach to industry challenges: The South African Sugar Industry
World Business Council for Sustainable Development/ National Business Initiative, October 5, 2004
The South African Sugar Industry is involved in pilot projects using the sustainable livelihoods approach to doing business with these growers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Combating "Hidden Hunger": Procter & Gamble takes up the fight
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, June 11, 2004
Procter and Gamble is taking up the fight against "hidden hunger" with NutriStar, a low cost powdered drink mix containing all the vital micronutrients growing children need.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Insuring fair prices for farmers in developing countries: Rabobank International
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 16, 2004
This partnership between private and public sector organizations explores new market-based approaches for assisting small-scale producers in developing countries to better manage their vulnerability to commodity price fluctuations.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Shell Solar in Sri Lanka: Improving lives with the flick of a switch
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 1, 2004
Shell Solar Lanka, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell, intends to target these market segments where potential customers will be able to save money over the lifetime of a solar home system by moving away from the inconvenience and recurring cost of kerosene lanterns and battery charging, while receiving better service.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodacom: Extending telecom services to South Africa’s poor
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, February 2, 2004
Vodacom has confronted the enormous challenge of providing subsidized public cellular telephones in under-serviced and rural areas by seting up stationary phone shops or kiosks with multiple lines, all connected to Vodacom's existing infrastructure through a wireless link.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Businesses Are Helping to Overcome Global Poverty
By Stern N, Richard Ivey Business School, January 1, 2004
The facts today point to a decline in global poverty and to the reality that global economic development is working. These positive developments are due to policies pursued by both public organizations and the international business community. But as the Chief Economist of the World Banks says, business can do even more to help the world's poorest countries.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Procter & Gamble – PuR Water Purification Sachets
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, October 21, 2003
A complementary approach to providing piped-treated water is through treatment of drinking water directly in people’s homes. This point of use (POU) model has the advantages of cost, immediate availability and ease of distribution to reach rural areas
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
CARE Kenya
By Ewart, Tom and Pratima Bansal, Richard Ivey School of Business, October 13, 2003
On October 14, 2003, George Odo was finally asked the question he most feared: "What will happen to the farmers when CARE leaves?" George was the sector manager for Commercialization of Smallholder Agriculture for CARE Kenya. His vision had seeded the Rural Entrepreneurship and Agribusiness Promotion (REAP) project. By securing export contracts, financing and training farmers, REAP had successfully pulled farmers in Kibwezi, Kenya, over the poverty line. However, CARE financed the projects with grants from Western governments, and George knew that CARE's donors would ultimately withdraw their support. Without the subsidies, the farmers risked returning to their old lives. George had spent many long hours and sleepless nights dwelling on how CARE's involvement in REAP could be commercially viable. George had to identify and implement a business model that was economically sustainable in order to prevent the farmers from falling back into poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 03/31/2006
HealthNet Uganda , Uganda
By Keisha Phipps & Genevieve Sangudi, Steven Woolway, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Analyzes Healthnet Uganda's evolution from NGO to sustainable enterprise but bringing portable healthcare service to Uganda's rural areas.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodacom's Community Cell Phones , South Africa
By Jennifer Reck & Brad Wood, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Discusses how Vodacom is providing telecommunications to poor communities in South Africa.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Afrique Initiatives, Senegal
By Luis Castro & Sharon Smith, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Analyzes the success two social development organizations in Senegal.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Coca-Cola: The entrepreneur development program
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, March 20, 2003
Coca-Cola’s Southern Africa division, in conjunction with local bottling companies, have developed the Entrepreneur Development Program in South Africa to help new entrepreneurs enter the supply chain and profit from new sustainable business ventures.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Expanding the Playing Field: Nike's World Shoe Project, Asia
By Ted London & Heather McDonald, World Resources Institute, 2002
The case analyzes Nike's international expansion and highlights strategic and internal challenges faced by multinational companies attempting to create a foothold in emerging markets, and investigates the sustainability issues surrounding market entry into the bottom of the pyramid.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Books
Africa Emerges as China and India’s New Economic Frontier
By Harry G. Broadman, World Bank, September 16, 2006
Chinese and Indian firms are increasingly doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa, and their interest in the continent extends well beyond a hunt for natural resources, a new World Bank study says.
Exports from Africa to Asia tripled in the last five years, making Asia Africa's third largest trading partner (27 percent) after the European Union (32 percent) and the United States (29 percent), according to Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier. Indian and Chinese foreign direct investment also grew, with China's amounting to $US1.18 billion by mid-2006, notes the study.
>> More Details | created on: 09/22/2006
The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working
By Robert Calderisi, Palgrave Macmillan , 2006
Calderisi's aim is to move beyond the hand-wringing and finger-pointing which dominates most discussions of Africa. Instead, he suggests concrete steps which Africans and the world can take to liberate talent and enterprise on the continent.
>> More Details | created on: 03/13/2006
Multinational Corporations: A Key to Global Poverty Reduction
Global Envision, 2006
MNCs have the unmatched power and competence to reduce global poverty. Increasingly, world opinion, as well as the inclinations of their own managers and staff, urges MNCs to use that power more effectively. But MNCs lack a vehicle to make that transition in a sustainable and legitimate way.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Inequality and Poverty in Africa in an Era of Globalization: Looking Beyond Income to Health and Education
By David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program Working Paper No. 194 , November 25, 2005
This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of wellbeing - education and health - in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
The Economic Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction: A study of rural communities in India (Gujarat), Mozambique and Tanzania
By Prof. David Souter, Dr Nigel Scott, Prof. Christopher Garforth, Prof. Rekha Jain, Prof. Ophelia Mascarenhas & Dr. Kevin McKemey, DFID - UK Department for International Development, October, 2005
Aimed at a policy audience this paper looks at the use of various communications technologies in villages in Gujarat, Mozambique and Tanzania.
>> More Details | created on: 06/06/2006
Agricultural Growth and the Poor: An Agenda for Development
World Bank, June 1, 2005
The majority of the world's poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture. Despite the strong linkages between broad-based agricultural growth and poverty reduction, international support to agriculture sharply declined from the late 1980s. The need to raise agriculture's prominence in the development agenda has never been greater. This book seeks to articulate the World Bank's Rural Strategy on agriculture to the wider development community. It provides decision makers with the rationale for supporting agriculture by presenting the lessons learned on the policies, institutions, and priority investments that can sustain pro-poor agricultural growth.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Capitalism at the Crossroads
By Stuart L. Hart, Wharton School Publishing, March 30, 2005
Global capitalism stands at a crossroads—facing international terrorism, worldwide environmental change, and an accelerating backlash against globalization. Today's global companies are at a crossroads, too: finding new strategies for profitable growth has never been more challenging. Both sets of problems are intimately linked, says Stuart L. Hart—and so are the solutions.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Agricultural Investment Sourcebook: Agriculture and Rural Development (Trade and Development)
World Bank, January 1, 2005
Investing to promote agricultural growth and poverty reduction is a central pillar of the World Bank’s current rural strategy, Reaching the Rural Poor (2003). One major thrust of the strategy outlines the priorities and the approaches that the public sector, private sector, and civil society can employ to enhance productivity and competitiveness of the agricultural sector in ways that reduce rural poverty and sustain the natural resource base. These actions involve a rich mixture of science, technology, people, communication, management, learning, research, capacity building, institutional development, and grassroots participation.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Technology, Globalization and the Poor: Summary of the Global Knowledge for Development Virtual Conference
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, December 1, 2004
Can technology help make globalization work for the poor? Can the private sector use ICT to create, as CK Prahalad argues, "sustainable win-win scenarios where the poor are actively engaged and, at the same time, the companies providing products and services to them are profitable"? During four weeks in November and December 2004, GKD’s Technology, Globalization and the Poor online conference attempted to explore these questions. This PDF document is a searchable compilation of the discussion.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists: Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity
By Raghuram Rajan & Luigi Zingales, Crown Business, October 1, 2004
Capitalism’s biggest problem is the executive in pinstripes who extols the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Profits with Principles: Seven Strategies for Delivering Value with Values
By Ira Jackson & Jane Nelson, Currency, June 29, 2004
At a time when unethical business practices continue to dominate the business press, PROFITS WITH PRINCIPLES offers persuasive proof that when businesses combine profit making with a concern for values and the greater good, they do better in the marketplace than those that concentrate only on the bottom line.
>> More Details | created on: 02/14/2008
Poverty Reduction and Agricultural Trade in Sub-Saharan Africa
By Nathan Associates Inc. TCB Project, USAID, May, 2004
The paper describes a path for trade-led sustainable economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa that will directly benefit the rising numbers of poor people who live primarily in rural areas.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty and the Threat to Global Stability
By William Lewis, University of Chicago Press, April 16, 2004
The disparity between rich and poor countries is the most serious, intractable problem facing the world today. The chronic poverty of many nations affects more than the citizens and economies of those nations; it threatens global stability as the pressures of immigration become unsustainable and rogue nations seek power and influence through extreme political and terrorist acts. To address this tenacious poverty, a vast array of international institutions has pumped billions of dollars into these nations in recent decades, yet despite this infusion of capital and attention, roughly five billion of the world's six billion people continue to live in poor countries. What isn't working? And how can we fix it?
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Raising the Bar: Creating Value with the United Nations Global Compact
By Claude Fussler (editor) & Aron Cramer, et al, Greenleaf Publishing, 2004
Raising the Bar, produced by a unique team of business experts and UN agencies, is designed to fill a critical vide - poches the support of more than 1,000 organisations for the globally recognised Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the need for this support to be translated into the day-to-day running of business to create value and improve performance.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
How to Change the World: Social Enrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
By David Bornstein, Oxford University Press, December 1, 2003
What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up--and remake the world for the better.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Reaching the Rural Poor: A renewed Strategy for Rural Development
By Csaba Csaki & C. De Haan, The World Bank, 2003
Today the fight against poverty will be won or lost in rural areas, home to about 70% of the world's poor. The likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
A New Financial System for Poverty Reduction and Growth
By Biagio Bossone & Abdourahmane Sarr, International Monetary Fund, October 1, 2002
The proposal draws on the premise that the availability of stable demand deposits for bank lending, in the process of which inside money is created, does not require any act of intentional saving. The authors argue that separating inside money creation from lending, and distributing it on a nonlending basis to depositors through specialized payment service institutions, could broaden access to financial resources, fuel non-inflationary, demand-led growth; and foster financial deepening, diversification, and stability.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
Building Partnerships: Collaboration Between the UN and Business
The International Business Leaders Forum, June 1, 2002
This book, a joint venture of the UN Global Compact and the UN Department of Public Information in cooperation with The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), provides a comprehensive overview of a very significant, but not widely reported, trend occurring at the United Nations: the opening up of the organization to new types of partnerships with business.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Access to Credit and Its Impact on Welfare in Malawi
By Aliou Diagne & Manfred Zeller, International Food Policy Research Institute ISBN: 0-89629-119-7, April, 2001
>> View Article | created on: 03/13/2006
Development as Freedom
By Amartya Sen, Anchor Books, August 15, 2000
Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of economic life and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. It is a good to be enjoyed by the world's entire population. Drawing on moral and political philosophy and technical economic analysis, this work gives the nonspecialist reader powerful access to Sen's paradigm-altering vision and vividly shows how he, in the words of the Nobel Prize committee, has both "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems" and "opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers."
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
By Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins, et al, Rocky Mountain Institute, 1999
For decades, environmentalists have been warning that human economic activity is exceeding the planet's limits. Of course we keep pushing those limits back with clever new technologies; yet living systems are undeniably in decline. These trends need not be in conflict—in fact, there are fortunes to be made in reconciling them. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, is the first book to explore the lucrative opportunities for businesses in an era of approaching environmental limits.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Whose Reality Counts?: Putting the First Last
By Robert Chambers, ITDG Publishing, 1997
In this sequel to Rural Development: Putting the Last First Robert Chambers argues that central issues in development have been overlooked, and that many past errors have flowed from domination by those with power. Development professionals now need new approaches and methods for interacting, learning and knowing. Through analyzing experience – of past mistakes and myths, and of the continuing methodological revolution of PRA (participatory rural appraisal) – the author points towards solutions.In many countries, urban and rural people alike have shown an astonishing ability to express and analyze their local, complex and diverse realities that are often at odds with the top-down realities imposed by professionals.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
2025: Scenarios of Us and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology
By Joseph Coates & John Mahaffie, et al, Oakhill Press, September 1, 1996
Tapping the worlds of science and technology, this penetrating look at the years ahead paints a fascinating picture you're sure to enjoy. Looking backward from the year 2025, fifteen scenarios reflect a well-focused view of what life will be like in the United States as well as other societies (both affluent and less prosperous).
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Cost Sharing and Access to Health Care for the Poor: Equity Experiences in Tanzania
By William Newbrander & Stephen Sacca, USAID Bur. for Africa Ofc. of Sustainable Development, August, 1996
>> View Article | created on: 02/13/2006
Business as Partners in Development: Creating Wealth for Countries, Companies, and Communities
The International Business Leaders Forum, 1996
Published in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, this publication is aimed at every level of an organisation, and seeks to stimulate consideration of the new way of doing business. In the context of three billion people rapidly taking their place in market economies, the private sector has become the principal motor of development and a growth-test of economic strength.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
By Paul Hawken, HarperCollins Publishers, June 1, 1994
Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is no ordinary capitalist. Hawken is on a one-man crusade to reform our economic system by demanding that First World businesses reduce their consumption of energy and resources by 80 percent in the next 50 years. As if that weren't enough, Hawken argues that business goals should be redefined to embrace such fuzzy categories as whether the work is aesthetically pleasing and the employees are having fun; this applies to corporate giants and mom-and-pop operations alike. He proposes a culture of business in which the real world, the natural world, is allowed to flourish as well, and in which the planet's needs are addressed.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
The New World of Microenterprise Finance: Building Healthy Financial Institutions for the Poor
By Maria Otero & Elisabeth Rhyne, ACCION , 1994
The new world of microfinance encourages institutions to achieve larger scale and reach economic self-sufficiency by linking to the formal financial sector. This book explores the major elements underlying this approach to microenterprise finance, and evaluates various methodologies to provide financial services to the poor. The final section is devoted to case studies of Bank Rakyat Indonesia, BancoSol (Bolivia), the Association of Solidarity Groups (Colombia) and the Kenya Rural Enterprise Program.
>> More Details | created on: 03/13/2006