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How Africa Lags and Leads in the ICT World
Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, reports on the state of African connectivity development, which remains hampered by very high costs. In West Africa, for example, connectivity costs more than 66 times as much as it does in the United States--$8 per kbps...
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Diverse Voices On the Internet
The thing to do in development right now (the right thing in my opinion) is to have as much initiative and control as possible given to the beneficiary. That is one of the main tenets behind the BOP market theory, grassroots development and other approaches. Poverty alleviation and...
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Catalytic Communities – Bottom-up Solutions to Local Problems
Cory?s post about the Tech Museum Awards reminded me to look through the list of this year?s Laureates. Nominees outside the Economic Development category may not necessarily be base of the pyramid focused, but they tend to be really innovative and under-the-radar. As I browsed down...
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2006 Tech Museum Award Laureates
The Laureates for the 2006 Tech Museum Awards were recently announced. The Tech Museum Awards is an international awards program that honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity.While this awards program is more about recognition than about...
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The Benefits of Trade Should Not Be Oversold
The Financial Times exposes the hype over trade and poverty in the context of all the rhetoric we?ve heard regarding the failure of the Doha round.? The last series of WTO meetings ground to a halt, largely over the ?developed? world?s refusal to significantly cut agricultural tariffs...
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BizWeek Takes a Shot at Explaining Microfinance
It was bound to happen- BusinessWeek caught the microfinance bug today, publishing an extended overview of this booming industry in India.? Rather than simply explaining the microfinance movement and describing how it works, the author gets into some of the structural imbalances spurring market...
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Microfinance Regulation: Two Countries Show What Works and What Doesn’t
Uganda and India have further institutionalized the growing political popularity of microfinance by attempting to regulate it.? A closer look shows how government intervention can facilitate or hinder the growth of these programs. ? Uganda?s government has chosen to simply limit the...
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Trends in the “South” Will Have Serious Affects on the BOP
As heads of the World Bank battle it out over how to curtail corruption in beneficiary countries, a curious trend is forming that could be a far greater threat to the open, global economic system they favor than any graft or bribery scheme. Over the weekend 116 countries were represented at the...
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