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

Brazil Launches Drive to Lift 16 Mln from Poverty

BRASILIA, June 2 (Reuters) - President Dilma Rousseff launched an ambitious plan on Thursday to eliminate dire poverty in Brazil within four years by lifting more than 16 million people from conditions of "misery." The "Brazil Without Misery" program is the signature policy of the former leftist guerrilla’s first term, her advisers said, fulfilling one of the key promises she made in her campaign for ...

Source

Reuters (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Garbage Disposal Innovation Wins Kenyan Firm Sh4.2 Million Award

A local garbage disposal concept has won the Dell Social Innovation Award for 2011, the latest conquest by a Kenyan firm in the world of innovations with high social impact. TakaTaka Solutions, a social enterprise that collects and recycles waste in Nairobi, won the Sh4.2 million top prize in the global competition for its waste management solution, and will use the money to bankroll its recycling programme. "The team exemplifies ingenuity, passion and entrepreneurial spirit. The ...

Source

Business Daily (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

PepsiCo Will Cater to Different Segments of Consumers

NEW DELHI: Beverage and snacks maker PepsiCo India is gunning for the bottom-of-the-pyramid consumer for the first time in the country, as its chairman, Manu Anand , drives the New York-based $60 billion parent’s target to reach the ’next one billion’ consumers in the value segment. In his first media interaction since he succeeded Sanjeev Chadha in January this year, Anand tells ET that PepsiCo is creating verticals to cater to different segments of consumers, ac...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

PoverUp Kick-Starts Microfinance One $200 Ice Cream Outing at a Time

You probably know that a little money in the U.S. could go a really long way in a poor country. But when a Westchester, New York high school student saw that a $200 5-year-old birthday party outing to the movies with friends was equal to the amount of the typical microloan, a light went on in her head. Charlie Javice, a half-French equestrienne who took early admission to the Wharton School (class of 2014), used that insight to co-found, with her brother El...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Hands Off Our Houses

Mumbai, India: LAST summer, a business professor and a marketing consultant wrote on The Harvard Business Review’s Web site about their idea for a $300 house . According to the writers, and the many people who have enthusiastically responded since, such a house could improve the lives of millions of urban poor around the world. And with a $424 billion market for cheap...

Source

The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Uncategorized

Region

South Asia

Fighting the Taliban One Irrigation Project at a Time

JALALABAD, Afghanistan-When Chris Corsten describes his job, he starts from space and zooms into the eastern hemisphere of the world, down into Central Asia, and then into Afghanistan, using Google Earth. In one of the country’s rural districts, nestled in mountains and riverbeds, are hundreds of colored dots representing construction sites. If Corsten moves his cursor over one of these dots, a geo-tagged photograph showing Afghan men building walls or mixing cement appears. If he display...

Source

Slate.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Electrifying Entrepreneur: The Founder of Afriq-Power is Upgrading Mali

Daniel Dembélé wants to electrify Africa . Trouble is, so do foreign multinationals. For the past five years, the 31-year-old Malian social entrepreneur has been trying to keep one step ahead. In 2006, he installed locally produced solar panels in a school in Banko, Mali. With children able to study after dark for the first tim...

Source

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

Region

North Africa & Near East

Pak to be Leading Recipient of UKAID Next Year

KARACHI: Pakistan will be biggest development programme partner of UKAID next year, said Andrew Mitchells, UK Secretary of State for Department of International Development (DFID). "The biggest development partnership programme that Britain will have next year in the world will be in Pakistan and it is designed to help children get into the schools," he said after inaugurating a mobile banking franchise of private mobile telephone company here on Wednesday in cooperation with Tameer-e-P...

Source

Business Recorder (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia