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This Week: Brazil’s Buses Cooler Than its World Cup Team?
It’s painful as an (admittedly fairweather) fan of the US team to acknowledge that even with all the gossip about how Brazil’s World Cup team is performing below expectations?they will still probably fly home with a sixth championship under their belts (I’ll refrain from making a...
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Cell Phone Banking and the BOP: Wizzit
Driving to Wolftrap this past Friday, a story on NPR?s Marketplace prompted me to turn up the volume ? the national business media was covering WIZZIT, a South African cell phone banking firm that NextBillion has covered extensively in the past. For the uninitiated, WIZZIT is a 1-year-old...
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More Thoughts on Ethanol
Silvio Donizetti Palvequeres, president of the farm workers? union in Ribeir?o Preto, told the New York Times in April that Brazil?s ethanol boom has only increased the burden placed on sugarcane farmhands.? ?You used to have to cut 4 tons a day, but now they want 8 or 10, and if you...
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The Latest on the $100 Laptop
Since it was announced in April of last year, MIT’s One Laptop per Child initiative has received a great deal of media attention, as well as some healthy skepticism. Questions were raised about the $100 laptop on NextBillion here and here. I hadn’t heard much recently about the project...
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Building Opportunity for the Majority: Day Two
The second day of ?Building Opportunity for the Majority? had an inauspicious beginning: I was told no coffee would be allowed into the auditorium, a change from the previous day?s policy and a potential threat to my productivity. The threat was averted by something much more powerful...
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Sugarcoating Petroleum’s Future
With skyrocketing gas prices and dwindling supplies of oil, many energy experts have turned their attention to Brazil and its thirty year initiative to develop alternative sources of energy. Now former President Bill Clinton has joined the rank of those who see Brazil as a pioneer in this...
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Mass Transit That Works
In grassroots politics, Porto Alegre is best known for participatory budgeting, a practice in which councils of city residents, and not political fat cats, decide how to allocate municipal funds. The success of this practice in rooting out corruption was a watershed event in local politics...
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Building Opportunity for the Majority: Quotes (Day One)
"I compare vaccines to water. I compare vaccines to education.” -Jean R. Stephenne, President, Biologicals, GlaxoSmithKline, Belgium “When you request 100-200 million units, you’re able to influence corporate strategy.” -Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman, One...
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