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

BANGALORE: HP on Wednesday announced a revolutionary pen-based technology that allows users to compute in their respective languages even without prior knowledge of English or typing. The gesture-based keyboard [GKB], developed by researchers at HP Labs India, also holds the potential for Indian languages derived from the Devanagari ? Tamil scripts and Kannada scripts ? to be used in a similar manner. This is to benefit more than 1.5 billion non-Engli...

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The Hindu (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Growing in India: Food for the world

By Anand Giridharadas by Anand Giridharadas Within ...

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International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

With focus on poor, firms vie for piece of global market

By JOSHUA BENTON / The Dallas Morning News Gerald Heeger is a newcomer to Texas, but he isn’t afraid to set Texas-size goals. In five years, he wants his company, Whitney International University, to enroll more than half a million students around the world and be on its way to becoming the biggest provider of higher education the Earth has ever seen. How’s that for audacity? Dr. Heeger said in his downtown Dallas office. I beli...

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Dallas Morning News (link opens in a new window)

Joseph Hanania, Managing Director, HP Middle-East, participated at the recently concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Middle-East. Held at Sharm EL Sheikh in Egypt, the event was attended by more than 1,200 government, business and civil society leaders from 46 countries to help prepare the way for a more prosperous and peaceful future for the Middle East. Participants looked at the role of businesses as the engines of job creation and the need for leaders to work together for pe...

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AMEinfo.com (link opens in a new window)

This isn’t just a job for governments and aid agencies, he said. Private companies have a role to play too but a public/private balance will have to be found between the kind of basic infrastructure work that will never return a profit and those that will. World Bank Group head Paul Wolfowitz Monday called for increased investment and involvement in development projects targeting poverty particularly in Africa. Africa’s infrastructure may have been a...

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Computer Partner (link opens in a new window)

Microcredit programs offer way to get ahead without being exploited

ACCRA, Ghana - The sparkling new bank, down the street from Accra’s bustling Makola market, looks like a financial institution anywhere: six busy teller windows, a new accounts desk, air conditioning holding the steamy heat outside at bay. But for Ghanaians who have never had access to banking services before, it represents a revolution. After years of seeking small loans from loan sharks, family members and nonprofit microcredit programs, they now have what they never had befor...

GENEVA , May 29 (IPS) - The World Health Assembly concluded its annual session over the weekend with the adoption of a resolution that could change the concept of drug R&D, and open the door to a system that gives the world’s poor greater access to medicines. The resolution approved by the Assembly, the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), urges the 192 member states to make the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals a strategic sector, thus committin...

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Inter Press Service News Agency (link opens in a new window)

Tools for Poor Farmers

To Martin Fisher, 48, and Nick Moon, 51, a simple pump could be the solution to poverty for millions of Africans. They’re the co-founders of KickStart, a San Francisco--based nonprofit that encourages rural entrepreneurship by providing tools that Africa’s poor can afford. Since the group was founded in Nairobi in 1991 under the name ApproTEC, it has developed a machine to make building blocks, a press that extracts cooking oil from seeds, a hay baler and a series of hand-operated micro-...

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Time Magazine (link opens in a new window)