Articles by Al Hammond
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Friday
October 7
2005Technology at the Edge: Near-term examples in Health
Three of the eight Millennium Development Goals focus specifically on improving the health of the world’s poor, but improving healthcare is critical if any of the goals are to be achieved. Much of the medical equipment produced for rich countries is too expensive for use in rural developing...
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Wednesday
October 5
2005Technology at the Edge: Low-tech, near-term examples
Several new technology innovations developed specifically for BOP markets are already making a noticeable impact. KickStart (formerly ApproTech) has been developing and promoting such technologies since 1991, with the explicit goal of helping entrepreneurs in East Africa establish and run...
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Monday
October 3
2005Technology Innovations at the Edge
BOP markets used to be regarded, if they were regarded by large corporations at all, mostly as a place to unload excess or obsolete product. That has changed, as I will attempt to illustrate in this and following posts. What I am suggesting is that low-income, predominantly rural communities...
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Friday
September 2
2005Live from the BOP workshops in Mexico and Brazil
Some 250 people packed a hotel conference center here in Mexico City to hear Professors Stu Hart and CK Prahalad and a host of Mexican government officials, corporate executives, and social entrepreneurs talk about the business and social opportunities represented by the base of the pyramid....
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Tuesday
August 30
2005Kurt Hoffman Interview: Summing up the Shell Foundation Experience
This post is Part 5 of a 5 part series.A.H.: How does the Shell Company view your activities? How do they see them in a strategic sense?K.H.: What matters most inside a big company is performance. In the early stages, we got help, but no real interest. It was hard to get the business...
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Monday
August 29
2005Interview with Kurt Hoffman, Part IV
This post is part 4 of a 5 part series.A.H: Why start these funds? What were your motivations?K.H.: The Foundation was designed to focus on social issues that relate to Shell?s business; namely, energy and the environment, and energy and poverty. Both Chris West (Deputy Director) and I...
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Friday
August 26
2005Interview with Kurt Hoffman, Part III
This post is part 3 in a 5 part series.A.H.: What?s next, and is there a way to pay for technical assistance as part of the investment process, so that an SME fund could be fully self-financing and sustainable?K.H.: Once we had shown the model worked, and that it could generate a...
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Thursday
August 25
2005Interview with Kurt Hoffman, Part II
This post is part 2 of a 5 part series.A.H.: After the initial success of the Uganda Fund, what were the next steps? K.H.: Following our success in Uganda, we set up the Empowerment through Energy Fund in South Africa with ABSA Bank and development finance bank IDC. ABSA committed $5...
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