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The Ten-Cent Solution
If good ideas were all that mattered, everybody who has heard of Jeffrey Sachs would have heard of James Tooley as well?but they aren?t, and you almost certainly haven?t. In fact, even if you are keenly interested in education, aid, or Third World development, which are Tooley?s areas of research, you still probably haven?t heard of him. This is not because his work is dull or unimportant. His findings are surprising, and they bear directly and profoundly on the relief of extreme pove...
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Business and the Global Poor
Are the world’s poor, who individually have less than $5 a day in disposable income, a viable market for new goods and services? Consider the fact that there are four billion people around the globe that fit this description and you have the start of an answer. But businesses that want to enter this market at the bottom of the economic pyramid (BOP) must look beyond just selling products?they must find ways to create social and economic value, according to the editors of a new vol...
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B-Schools Put Africa on the Curriculum
Long relegated to the back shelf by the media, Africa is hot these days. And not just in the celebrity circles frequented by Bono, Angelina Jolie, and Oprah. Africa is top-of-mind on B-school campuses, too. Schools such as Columbia, Yale, and Dartmouth’s Tuck are sending their students to places like Tanzania and South Africa. Meanwhile, B-schools are tweaking their curricula to include Africa-centric case studies. As far as many MBAs are concerned, there’s no better emerging economy to ...
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Why Indian companies are setting their sights on western rivals
?Being in this market, contrary to what everyone believes, you always need to be more competitive than what you have to be outside, because the buying power in this country is so low. So you?re always thinking of how to address that segment of the market. ...
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Reliance, Bharti may storm microfinance
Reliance Retail and Bharti, which has joined hands with Wal-Mart, could storm the micro-credit space as they look to establish rural supply chain linkages to service their mega retail forays. According to sources, Reliance Retail is likely to move the RBI seeking permission to set up an NBFC arm that will operate as a microfinance institution (MFI). It may also look at partnering existing MFIs as part of its ambitious supply chain with rural and semi-urban markets for which the co...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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India’s Vision for a Digital Billion
As 2006 drew to a close the President of India outlined his vision for a connected India. He challenged the country’s technical elite to provide free bandwidth for anyone, anywhere, anytime. In the speech, Dr Abdul Kalam said that communication channels were a demolisher of imbalances and likened the government’s responsibility to it to laying the roads. This one action, he said, would not only boost the economy of Indi...
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Phelps’s Prize
The Nobel Prize lectures given last month by the economics and the peace laureates strikingly emphasized entrepreneurship. But the kinds of entrepreneurship espoused by the laureates are profoundly different. The economist Edmund Phelps’s lecture highlights the contribution of entrepreneurial individuals, firms and financiers in transforming stagnant societies dominated by small-business owners into dynamic economies with large and highly productive commercial enterprise. Mr. Phel...
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Equity Bank yesterday unveiled Internet banking service in the local market after a successful trial run in London to tap the purses of over 10,000 Kenyans living in the diaspora. The service allows customers worldwide to access their accounts for purposes of conducting convenient payments such as monthly salary transfers, remittances, affordable money transfers, foreign currency issuance, among other services. Yesterday?s launch, which was presided over by Commonwealth ...
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