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

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

FINCA Int?l Announces Launch of FINCA Microfinance Holdings

Microfinance organization FINCA International (FINCA), recently announced the launch of a subsidiary called FINCA Microfinance Holdings, LLC (FMH). FMH, will strike a balance between attracting capital needed for expansion and protecting the integrity of FINCA’s charitable mission. It is also expected to help FINCA nearly double its client base to 1.5 million people across its network of 21 programs in Africa, Latin America, Eurasia and the Greater Middle East, while maintaining its...

Source

Microfinance Focus (link opens in a new window)

Can Matt Damon Bring Clean Water to Africa?

Once upon a time, Matt Damon went for a long walk in rural Zambia. The devoted family man and method philanthropist was accompanying a 14-year-old Zambian girl who had no idea that her hiking companion was an Academy Award-winning international heartthrob. The walk came toward the end of a 10-day African journey, a systematic primer on the complexities of the continent’s extreme poverty that had been organized for Damon by staffers from his friend Bono’s ONE campaign. Damon was ...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Agriculture

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

AP Govt Sends Proposal for Microfinance NBFC to Centre

The Andhra Pradesh government has sent proposals to the Centre to start a non-banking financial institution to meet microfinance requirements of the state’s poor people, a senior state official said today. The proposed non-banking finance company (NBFC) will charge an interest of 15% against 24 to 26% being charged by private MFIs in the state, Reddy Subrahmanyam, principal secretary, rural development said. "The proposals have been sent and we are awaiting the Centre’s no...

Source

Moneycontrol.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia