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

AMREF Ethiopia: Reducing poverty through skills provision

AMREF’s new project in Kechene aims to capitalise on the artisan know-how in the area. People who make a living from handicrafts are often looked down on by the Ethiopians ? they are viewed very much as the bottom of the heap. They are often taken advantage of financially by local, better educated traders. Over the next year, AMREF will single out 50 people and help them to set up small businesses. They will receive a loan but also learn business acumen and marketing skills. The...

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African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF)

The push for the next billion, by John C. Tanner

One of the top themes at this year’s 3GSM World Congress in February was the next billion mobile users. Six weeks later, it’s looking more like the next few billion mobile users. The mobile industry has been talking about the next billion since the one billionth mobile user signed on somewhere in mid-2003. Now, it’s more than halfway there, and the mobile industry is already looking ahead to the three-billion mark. In 2003, when th...

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Wireless Asia

Texting for Jobs in Kenya, by Mike Masnick

Kenyans are finding it easier to post and find jobs via mobile phone text message than the traditional Internet, highlighting how mobile services leapfrog more than just voice communications in developing nations. For years, there have been stories about how mobile phone service in developing nations would help them to leapfrog other nations with legacy landline phone systems. Most of the focus, though, has been on the voice communications aspect of the...

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TheFeature

Bringing the Internet To the Whole World, by Jonathan Krim

AMD, known mostly as a computer chip maker perennially in the shadow of giant Intel Corp., recently unveiled a pared-down personal computer that costs roughly $200 in an ambitious drive to get computers with Internet access into the hands of 50 percent of the world’s population by 2015. Trying to bridge the digital divide with low-cost computers is neither a new idea nor one that has been particularly successful. A handheld machine developed in India called Simputer is attracting ...

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The Washington Post

A helping hand, by Rasheeda Bhagat

In a bid to create sustainable and gainful employment, aid resource utilisation and reach technological inputs to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat conducted the second Commonwealth-India small business competitiveness development programme in Chennai last week.. An important achievement of this conference was to mainstream gender participation in economic activity, and I’ll not be exaggerating when I say that at most sessions the women ent...

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The Hindu Business Line

Region

South Asia

Kenya looks underground for power, by Ishbel Matheson

Impala graze among a network of heating pipes. Giraffes nibble at acacias, metres away from a giant power-generating plant. But the fumes belching from the chimneys are not polluting petrochemical smoke. They are eco-friendly water vapour, which drifts off into the blue sky. The Ol Karia station is the continent’s biggest geothermal power-generating plant. It takes its name from a nearby volcano, which erupted 150 years ago and is still active. There are 22 wells across th...

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BBC News

Selling to the Poor

There is a surprisingly lucrative market in targeting low-income consumers. With sales growth harder to come by in a competitive world, enterprising companies are seeking expansion among the long-ignored lower classes. A nice 3 page story over at Time Online Edition ....

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Time Online Edition (link opens in a new window)

Villagers Generate Own Hydro-Electric Power, by Mwangi Mumero

A small rural group in Meru South has shattered the myth that only giant corporates like KenGen can generate hydro electric power. Having been repeatedly snubbed by the Kenya Power and Lighting Company in their attempt to get connected to the national grid, 150 members of Baraani Hydro-electric Self Help group have generated power from a local river and distributed it to over 36 households. We can now light up our houses, iron clothes, charge mobile phones and watch television p...

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The Nation (Nairobi)