NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Gates Foundation Unveils New Agricultural Policy

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest donors to international agricultural research for development, has announced tighter priorities for its funding for Africa and South Asia, concentrating on key target countries and crops. In Africa the focus will be on Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. These countries will benefit from significant investment "to...

Source

SciDev.net (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Social Protection is the Best Foundation for Development

The social and economic system that has powered global economic relations in the past two decades is clearly in crisis. We now know only too well that periods of "rapid growth" have been based on unsustainable bubbles; that such growth has contributed little in terms of generating more decent work and has significantly increased inequality; and that people will no longer accept these unfair outcomes, as shown by the ...

Source

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

Andy Lieberman: Social Entrepreneurs, Not Charities, Will Help the Next Billion Out of Poverty

This week the world hits 7 billion in population, just 12 years after we reached 6 billion. Virtually all of these new billion live at the so-called Base of the Pyramid -- that segment of humanity that, by virtue of economic and political circumstance, struggles to meet basic food, water and energy needs on incomes of around $2 a day. Here at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, we are confronting this problem every day and have come to the conclusion that the old ways...

Source

MercuryNews.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

A Spring of Hope

India has over six million blind people and over 50 million malnourished children. It also has one of the highest rates of maternal deaths at childbirth in the world. Just some statistics that highlight the shortcomings of the healthcare sector in the world’s second most populous nation. But there is hope in the form of some private ventures that are addressing these problems and are establishing global standards for cost, quality and delivery. In the first of our three-part series on sus...

Source

Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

India?s Innovation Stimulus

By Thomas Friedman THE world hit seven billion people last week, and I think I met half of them on the road from New Delhi to Agra here in India. They were on foot, on bicycle, on motor scooters. They were in pickups, dented cars and crammed into motorized rickshaws. They were dodging monkeys and camels and cows. Somehow, though, without benefit of police or stoplights, this flow of humanity that is modern India impossibly went about its business. But just when your mind tells you that ...

Source

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

Region

South Asia

Stanford gets $150 million to fight world poverty

Stanford University will announce one of the largest cash gifts in school history today - $150 million to the Graduate School of Business to create an institute that develops creative ways to fight poverty worldwide. It all began with $1.25. That’s the amount of money that 1.4 billion people in developing countries live on each day, according to the World Bank. And that’s the statistic that Bob King, founder of Menlo Park investment firm Peninsula Capital, and his wife, Do...

Source

SF Gate (link opens in a new window)

Ivory Coast to Raise Profits for Cocoa Farmers

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - A major restructuring of the cocoa sector is under way in Ivory Coast, officials announced Thursday in reforms they say will give a boost to the country’s growers by guaranteeing them a minim price. Agriculture Minister Sangafowa Coulibaly said the government will create a state-controlled company in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, which will guarantee farmers 60 percent of the international cocoa price. At a news conference where he...

Source

The Washington Post (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

InVenture Announces New Mobile Application for Small Businesses

InVenture Announces Release New Mobile Application "InSight" for Small Businesses Worldwide SMS System Will Offer Unique Insights Into the Inner Workings of Successful Micro-Entrepreneurs SANTA MONICA, CA, NOVEMBER, 3 2011 - Peer-to-peer micro-investment platform InVenture is proud to announce today, "InSight", a short messaging service (SM...

Source

Press Release (link opens in a new window)