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

Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones

By Eric Bellman In the village of Karanehalli, a cluster of simple homes around an intersection of two dirt roads about 40 miles from India’s high-tech capital of Bangalore, Farmer K.T. Srinivasa doesn’t have a toilet for his home or a tractor for his field. But when a red and white cellular tower sprouted in his village, he splurged on a cellphone. While the way his family threshes rice -- crushing it with a massive stone roller -- hasn’t chang...

Source

The Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

How to count the invisibles?

On a visit to a poor neighborhood, or favela, in Rio de Janeiro several years ago, Melanie Edwards asked how many people lived there. She heard estimates from 5,000 to 60,000. No one really knew. They were ?invisible,? just a small part of the 1 billion people around the world who are off the grid, lacking birth certificates, driver?s licenses, or voter registration cards. ?They have nothing to show that they exist in the world,? Ms. Edwards says. That information gap poses...

Source

Christian Science Monitor (link opens in a new window)

India to Follow $2,000 Car with $20 Laptop

The project, backed by New Delhi, would considerably undercut the so-called $100 laptop, otherwise known as the Children’s Machine or XO, that was designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the US. The Children’s Machine, which received a cool reception in India, is the centrepiece of the One Laptop Per Child charity initiative launched by Nicholas Negroponte, the computer scientist and former director of MIT’s Media Lab. Intel launched a simila...

Source

The Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Experiments Bring Internet to Remote African Villages

By CHRIS NICHOLSON Published: ENTASOPIA, Kenya - The road from Nairobi winds 100 miles to this town deep in Masai country. The asphalt gives way to sand and dust, until finally it is just a dirt track climbing over broken hills and plunging back to desert flats. The going is slow.?The outpost, with about 4,000 inhabitants, is at the end of that road and beyond the reach of power lines. It has no bank, no post office, few cars and little infrastructure. Newspapers arrive in a bundle ev...

Source

New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Charity Alone is Not the Answer

Other new models of philanthropy are even more closely linked to the business world. Last year, the Soros Economic Development Fund, Google?s philanthropic arm, and the Omidyar Network unveiled a $17m fund to invest in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. SMEs are an important engine for economic growth and job creation but are sorely lacking in India due, in part, to a lack of the financing needed to scale up. Reuben Abraham, senior adviser to the fund based in Hyderabad, ...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Foreign Aid and Bad Government: Helping Entrepreneurs is the Right Approach

By IQBAL Z. QUADIR Barack Obama has talked a lot about changing the way America relates to the world, and few areas are as ripe for reform as our policies on foreign aid. They have contributed to economic stagnation in poor countries and deprived America of large export markets. Entrepreneurship, not aid, is essential to rejuvenate markets in the developing world and, in turn, help America prosper. During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money ...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Base of the Pyramid Innovations Offer Growth Opportunities for Business and Communities

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 30 January 2009 Despite the economic downturn, companies can find growth opportunities among the 3.7 billion people at the base of the pyramid (BOP) by adopting innovative strategies that benefit local communities, according to two reports released today by the World Economic Forum. The companion reports, entitled The Next Billions, present examples of successful BOP business ventures based on a year-long survey - drawn fro...

Source

World Economic Forum Press Release (link opens in a new window)

Capital Flows to Developing World at Risk of Collapse

Capital flows to emerging markets are in danger of collapsing this year as the financial crisis in advanced economies risks choking off the supply of credit to the developing world, an association of large banks warned on Tuesday. The Institute for International Finance forecasts net private sector capital flows to emerging markets will be no more than $165bn (?125bn, ?116bn) this year, less than half the $466bn inflow in 2008 and only one fifth of the amount sent in the peak year of ...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)