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

Microcredit Turns into Major Headache in Kenya

The power of microcredit to pull people out of destitution has been celebrated around the world during 2005, designated the International Year of Microcredit by the United Nations. In Kenya, however, the concept of microcredit risks losing its bloom. This follows concerns about a number of self-described microfinance institutions that have sprung up across the country over recent years, and which seem more intent on exploiting their clients than helping them work their wa...

Source

Mail & Guardian Online (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

I’d Like to Teach the World to Type

David Kirkpatrick WANT TO GRAB SOMEBODY’S ATTENTION IN the tech world? How about mentioning that you got e-mails from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell the night before, all of them weighing in on your current obsession. That’s what Nick Negroponte--legendary founder of MIT’s Media Lab and techno- impresario extraordinaire--said to me last month after he came offstage at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine. Negroponte had just presented the idea that engaged t...

Source

Fortune, Print

Switch to the Low-Income Customer

?We?ve changed our standard of innovation so we can serve more of the world?s consumers. So it?s now a better brand experience for the target consumer and a lower product cost structure than the competition can deliver.? Gilbert Cloyd, Procter & Gamble?s chief technology officer, unfolds a disposable nappy on a table at the company?s Cincinnati headquarters. With a lightly elasticated edge and a basic inner lining, it is a prototype that, if proven commerciall...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Nokia and Grameen Foundation USA Join Forces to Bring Affordable Telecommunications to Rural Village

Nokia and Grameen Foundation USA today announced a collaboration to bring affordable, accessible telecommunications to rural villages in Africa through microfinance. This collaboration builds on GFUSA’s global Village Phone initiative that helps people living in rural areas start self-sustaining businesses while providing affordable telecommunications to their communities. Access to affordable and reliable telecommunications services is a lifeline for rural communities and a crit...

Source

Yahoo! Finance (link opens in a new window)

Region

North Africa & Near East

Bank Throws Lifeline to Africa’s Private Sector

Jonathan Katzenellenbogen Mumbai In a massive boost to Africa’s private sector, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank arm that finances companies, is to almost treble its support on the continent over the next five years to more than $1bn a year. The expansion in financing to the continent will involve a doubling in IFC financing for projects in SA over the next year to about $200m. Part of the IFC’s unfolding plan is for it to play a fa...

Source

Business Day (Johannesburg) (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Brazil’s retailers start offering credit to a big new market: The poor

M?rcia Regina da Cruz, a 40-year-old janitor and mother of three, decided to splurge. Da Cruz, who lives in S?o Vicente, a coastal town an hour’s bus ride from S?o Paulo, made a purchase in September equal to one-fifth of her monthly salary. She bought three irons - one for herself and two as gifts for her mother and sister - for 72 reals, or $33. It was a big purchase, she said. I normally couldn’t pay for it. She could, thoug...

Source

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

Pro Mujer Launches Integrated Microfinance Program in Argentina, Targets the Most Impoverished

Pro Mujer, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Latin America’s poorest women help themselves through micro-credit, business training and health care linkages announced today the launch of operations in its fifth Latin American country, Argentina. With financial support from the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Pro Mujer plans to initiate operations in the province of Salta, Northern Argentina at the beginning of December 2005. An Argentine wine tasting event will be held Nov...

Source

Yahoo! Finance (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality

A novel plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries has caught the interest of governments and the attention of computer-industry heavyweights. First announced in January by Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, the initiative appears to be gaining steam. Mr. Negroponte is scheduled to demonstrate a working prototype of the device with United Nations Se...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)