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Guest Post: Hybrid Value Chains and the Base of the Pyramid in Africa
As a 2009 Global Graduate Research intern, the goal of my research on Africa has been to identify collaborations between the private and citizen sectors and learn what made them work (or what caused them to fail). So far, I have been able to find about 67 cases and while there’s still more work to be done, two clear trends seem to have emerged.
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Safe Water at the Base of the Pyramid: What Works? What Doesn?t? What?s Next?
IFC recently issued Safe Water for All, a thorough and illustrative report about the opportunities for the private sector in delivering clean water to the base of the pyramid. It sheds light on many of the topics covered in the review published here in NextBillion back in 2008.
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Guest Post: Imagining Sustainable Solutions
I am an unlikely choice to judge the final round of an event that touts itself as the "world’s premier student technology competition". Ask any of my tech-savvy and much younger co-workers - and when they stop laughing at the thought -they will undoubtedly and forcefully concur that I am technology-challenged. But there I was...
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Business Action for Africa
Business Action for Africa’s report From Crisis to Opportunity is hardly ground-breaking in its arguments. It presents, through the voices of influential leaders in business, development, and academia, a series of strategic imperatives that will mitigate the damage caused by the financial crisis and steady African progress toward the MDGs.
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Join the Debate: 1:1 vs. Shared Access Computing
Infodev and UNESCO have developed a new discussion and debate forum to explore the role of ICT in learning in developing countries. Called the Educational Technology Debate, it promotes a multi-week discussion over one month with two participants debating two sides of an argument, and additional user comments supporting or refuting either side.
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Making Better Investments at the Base of the Pyramid: A Framework for Impact Assessment
In "Making Better Investments at the Base of the Pyramid," Ted London of the University of Michigan points out that even though most ventures serving the world’s poor have feel-good stories and data on milestones, most of them lack a systematic way to assess how well they’re reaching the people they set out to serve.
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Advancing Young Research on the “Next Billion”
What are the hot academic debates on how to reach out the Base of the Pyramid and "grow inclusive markets?? How can young researchers, in their PhD or early faculty life, use innovative research tools to crack these nuts? And how can they make their insights relevant for practitioners?
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Why We Help: A Meditation on “Giving”
There are dozens of motives for people to work in the business of development and I’ve been pondering the psychology of "giving" and what drives people to want to work in international aid, donate to charities, work for non-profits, and generally work in an environment where there is a heightened desire to help others. So what drives you?
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- Agriculture
