NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

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 economic growth should be accompanied by a diversity of voices and a range of input.

Of course as much as we say that, a lot of the folks still designing development projects and writing about them in blogs like this one do not represent the beneficiary nor a very wide array of voices. In the spirit of hearing these other perspectives, I would encourage readers to check out a few blogs I have run across recently.The first is African Women Blogs, dedicated to ?providing a space for African women online to share information, provide resources and engage in conversations.? Topics cover the spectrum, but a couple that caught my eye from an entrepreneurial perspective discussed women’s access to birth control and African book publishers.

If you don?t mind skimming through about 50 new entries per day, take a look at Global Voices Online to read posts on current events and musings from bloggers in literally every corner of the world. Where else can you get a Syrian blog roundup?

Lastly, I know this is breaking the theme, as I?m pretty sure the guys who started this aren?t African, but Afrigadget is definitely worth a look. It covers new African innovations that sometimes include the mundane, but there are gems there, such as the wheelchair mobile phones story.