NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Innovations in the Fight Against Famine

The famine in Somalia has shed new light on world hunger and the efforts individuals and organizations are undertaking to combat it. Aside from airlifting food and providing IVs, there is a larger problem in need of solving. Organizations such as ...

Source

The Washington Post (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Haitians Return to Africa, Bringing Solar Energy

SEATTLE, U.S., Aug 2, 2011 (IPS) - Jean Ronel Noël, a young Haitian engineer, stood in a centuries-old fort on a small island just off Dakar and looked out at the Atlantic through a portal that once led enslaved Africans to the ships of the Middle Passage. "Finally we come to ’the door of the voyage of no return’," he wrote in a blog . "My blood wouldn’t stop boiling, wave after wave of...

Source

IPS (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

The Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Gravity defying, shooting star aged IRRs and other return ratios of Microfinance (MFIs) have led to a lustful gold rush for the mythical Incan fortune to be discovered by doing business at the proverbial BoP (bottom of the pyramid). Everyone is joining the bandwagon, Tier 2 Management Consulting Firms, "Social" Entrepreneurs, "Social" Venture Capitalists, Jhollawalahs, Professionals, all panning for gold across diverse sectors from education, energy, health, housing, sanitation to water etc. ...

Source

Microfinance Focus (link opens in a new window)

Citi, OPIC, Bank Danamon Back Indonesia?s Microfinance with USD20 Million Loan

Citi Indonesia, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and Bank Danamon will extend a USD20 million term loan to fund the growth of Bank Danamon’s microfinance programme, Danamon Simpan Pinjam (DSP), and to promote the financial inclusion of microentrepreneurs and small businesses in Indonesia. This loan will be the first from Citi and OPIC for the microfinance sector in Indonesia, and is part of Citi’s and OPIC’s USD250 million joint global initiative to support micro...

Source

The Asset (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Technology

Region

South Asia

Tags

telecommunications

A Smart New Way to Rate Socially Responsible Businesses

Better World Books sells used books. Nothing special there. But how it does it deserve more praise. Better World is a social enterprise that has put over $9 million in literacy and library programs around the world , minimized its carbon footprint with clever offset incentives to customers, and has been able to trea...

Source

GOOD (link opens in a new window)

Rural Chinese Shake Off Poverty Through Self-Development

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- On a muggy summer day in Xiuning County of central Anhui Province, Wu Fengfeng still chops wood with a five-kilogram carpenter axe in a workshop of the non-profit Desheng Carpentry School. The 18-year-old boy, who is from a poor rural family in Xiuning, said his only task now is to master the techniques of making the four-sided "immortal eight" table and palace chair -- two types of traditional Chinese furniture -- so that he can "graduate soon and make mone...

Source

Xinhua (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

Smartphone Means Social Enterprise in Africa

What if I told you that Africa’s mobile revolution is at the centre of the continent’s social enterprise? That they are using their mobiles to do things that we in the West are only starting to think about. As apart from the usual of phones being used to text, talk and make mobile money transactions; the mobile networks are also being used to spread key information about farming and healthcare to isolated rural areas exposed to the costs of disease and drought. In Africa,...

Source

Justmeans (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

The Microfinance Crisis: Is There a Way Out?

For the better part of nine months, the microfinance industry has been in paralysis because of restrictions put in place by the government of Andhra Pradesh, the state that was the center of micro-lending in India. Almost immediately, banks turned off the credit tap that allows microfinance lenders to operate, and borrowers abandoned the high repayment rates of the past and stopped paying. Recently, the full impact of the crisis has been revealed. SKS Microfinance, the stock market-list...

Source

The Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia