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Female Empowerment and the Promise of Microfinance
By Roshaneh Zafar Recently, I came across a quote from Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish statesman of the eighteenth century, ?the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing? (parentheses and emphasis, mine). The emphasis on ?women? is obviously my attempt to remind us that we need to review Pakistan?s situation through a gender lens. Looking at the recent events in Pakistan, I feel, at times, that a malaise ? a malaise of indifference -...
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Financial Times Announces 4th Editon of Sustainable Banking Awards
The Financial Times has launched the 2009 edition of the FT Sustainable Banking Awards, the leading awards recognising banks and other financial institutions for leadership and innovation in integrating social, environmental and corporate governance considerations into their operations. Now in their fourth year, the awards-organised by the FT in partnership with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group-are all the more timely in light of the financial crisis, which has exposed flaws in t...
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Should Businesses Save the World?
Michael Maiello is Editor of Intelligent Investing for Forbes.com. At the World Economic Forum last year, Bill Gates, who is as successful a philanthropist as he is an entrepreneur, introduced an idea he calls creative capitalism. It’s an attempt to harness the power of private ownership and laissez faire to improve lives while fixing what he sees as the major flaw in that system. Capitalism responds well to demand, but not at all to need. Or, as W...
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Business Education: Far From the Boardroom
When John Eder, an MBA student at Kenan-Flagler Business School in the US, was on a summer internship in Ethiopia giving business training to women with HIV/Aids, he discovered something surprising. ?Some of the women have been selling stuff in the local market for a long time,? he says. ?And they?d sit there and talk about principles I learned from my classes. Things my professors had been telling me, they would be telling me ? and they never went to any college or had any business t...
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A call to South Africa’s masses
There is a faint air of the evangelical preacher about Brian Richardson, the 52-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Wizzit, a South African company that has become a pioneer in the business of mobile banking. It is not just his austere uniform - smart black slacks and open-necked black shirt, its cuffs emblazoned with the company’s logo. As he explains his determination to challenge conventional banking prejudices and bring affordable financial services to the mass ma...
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Microfinance Leader Makes Multi-Million Dollar Investment in Microinsurance Companies
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23?? -- ACCION(R) International, a pioneer and leader in global microfinance, today announced that it plans to expand its investments to support the development and marketing of microinsurance services to the poor. ACCION has taken a $1.2 million equity share in ParaLife a Swiss microinsurance holding company offering financial protection to low-income populations and people with disabilities.? ACCION, drawing on its microinsurance experience, institutional relationsh...
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Connecting the Next Billion Users
Click reporter David Reid travelled to Hyderabad for the Internet Governance Forum - where governments and net users discuss what’s next for the web. The talk at the IGF was about how to get the net’s next billion users online and how it can aid economic development. It is not just about surfing the internet faster and downloading movies, this is actually one of the most vital and important economic tools of the twenty first century, said Marcus...
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Business Gurus Explore Opportunity in Poverty
Bangalore :? A major market research company was recently tasked by a French NGO to explore mobile phone usage patterns in slums in Kolkata, including the kind of information they like to receive on their phones and the price they were willing to pay, as part of an effort to scope out business opportunities entwined in social development. A start-up technology company in Bangalore is exploring ways to make low-end mobile phone experiences as entertaining as high-end ones with the unde...
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