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

Activate 2011: Mobiles Look Set to Play a Big Role in Africa’s Development

The mobile phone will have a dramatic impact on development in Africa over the next five years, declared Rakesh Rajani of Twaweza at the Activate conference this week on technology and social change in London. The technology industry has a track record of hype, but Rajani’s comments sound plausible given the huge number of pilot projects for mobiles in Africa in all areas of development. A race is on to find what...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Beyond the Poverty Trap

Is there an answer to the Biblical question why the poor will always be with us? Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both developmental economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have now come with their take on this perennial question in Poor Economics: A Radical Thinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (Random House, Rs 499). Their book, which is based on field studies and extensive interviews with the poor in the villages of India, Indonesia, Morocco, Kenya and oth...

Source

Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

The Bottom of the Pyramid

MANAGEMENT gurus have rhapsodised about "the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" in emerging markets ever since C.K. Prahalad popularised the idea in 2006. They have filled books with stories of cut-price Indian hospitals and Chinese firms that make $100 computers. But when it comes to the bottom of the pyramid in the rich world, the gurus lose interest. This is understandable. McDonald’s and Walmart do not have the same exotic ring as Aravind Eye Care and Tata Motors. The West...

Source

The Economist (link opens in a new window)

Plans Don’t Work for Urban Poor?

VARANASI: Though there are provisions for poverty alleviation in urban areas, a number of urban poor and slum dwellers in Varanasi are bound to face financial hardships. However, officials claim things are improving with the implementation of programmes. "It is difficult to manage household expenses for people like us," said Gopal, a daily wager. Like him, there are a number of people living mostly in slum...

Source

The Times of India (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Eko: The Mobile Bank for Low Income Customers

Eko is a low cost mobile banking solution for people in the low income groups. It is just the right service for India, where the workforce is 540 million-strong. Only about six per cent of these workers are employed in the organized sectors. The low cost mobile banking company Eko aims to serve the unorganized segments of our economy. Eko was founded in 2009 with the aim to reduce the cost of financial transactions. The reason? The bigger banks used to target only higher income group cu...

Source

The Mobile Indian (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Going Mobile: Egypt Gears Up for Cellphone Banking

Hani swears his wages were under the satellite box. They were just 400 Egyptian pounds (US$67) -- payment for a month of piecemeal work rigging TV dishes in the northern Cairo district of Shubra El-Kheima - but now they’d gone. Sitting in his dank single room, located up a muddy alley a half-hour’s walk from any major commercial enterprise, Hani toys with the broken padlock from his door and vows to find a safer place for his money. At 36 years old Hani has never had...

Source

Ahram Online (link opens in a new window)

Region

North Africa & Near East

Roads and Rice: How Innovation and Infrastructure Can Feed the World

As a new diplomat in 1968, I was assigned not to the chandeliered ballrooms of Europe (as I had hoped) but to the Mekong Delta of Vietnam , as a rural development adviser. The green revolution was just beginning to spread around the world, and a new "miracle rice", known as IR-8, developed at the International Ric...

Source

Guardian.co.uk (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

Bottom of the Pyramid Is Not Only About Low-cost Products, Says Stuart Hart

BANGALORE: It has been a little more than a decade since the late management guru C K Prahlad and Cornell professor Stuart Hart introduced the concept of the fortune at the bottom the pyramid. It deals with how companies can profitably target the huge mass of consumers at the low-income and below the poverty line (BPL) level. Hart now admits t...

Source

The Times of India (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia