NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Microfinance Firms Asked to be ?Fair? to the Poor

Mumbai: It’s back to basics for the Rs. 20,000 crore Indian microfinance sector as industry lobby group Sa-Dhan, which counts at least 250 microfinance institutions (MFIs) as members, has asked all such firms to deal "fairly" with debtors and avoid coercion in collecting dues. The association will in the next few weeks discuss compliance issues with individual MFIs, Sa-Dhan executive director Mathew Titus said. "The effort is to move towards a new regulatory regime," he added. ...

Source

livemint.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Invest in Agriculture to Tackle Food Crisis in East Africa, says IFAD

In the face of a prolonged drought in East Africa that is threatening the lives of an estimated 10 million people across the region, Geoffrey Livingston, Regional Economist for East and Southern Africa at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said: "We need to act now and step up investment in agriculture and smallholder farmers if we want to prevent a major food crisis." The effects of climate change have been becoming more and more apparent in the region including...

Source

CPI Financial (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Inc. 5000 Applicant of the Week: World Centric

As we process applications for the 2011 Inc. 500 5000, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States . One that caught our eye was Palo Alto , California

Source

Inc. (link opens in a new window)

Categories

Education

A New Way To Aid The Poor: Ask Them To Pay

In the last three years, a largely unnoticed foreign aid project has delivered sanitation to 5.4 million people around the world, helping prevent thousands dying from cholera, dysentery and other diseases. And it achieved all of this without paying for a single toilet. The Global Scaling-Up Sanitation Initiative , a marriage of Madison Avenue marketing and Main Street self-reliance, aims t...

Source

Fast Company (link opens in a new window)

An ?MBA? for the Bottom of the Pyramid

By Tripti Lahiri Tara Thiagarajan, the chairwoman of Tamil Nadu-based Madura Micro Finance Ltd. , has been browsing U.S. microfinance blogs in the U.S. and she doesn’t like what she sees. "The question people are focusing on is not really the right one," she said. Even though it’s been over two decades since formal microlenders have existed, Ms. Thiagarajan says it’s still early days to ask, "Does it work?" Ins...

Source

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

Mobile Banking to Help 2 Billion People by 2020: Study

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Mobile financial services are expected to improve the lives of around 2 billion people in developing countries within a decade and boost economies, a Boston Consulting Group study found. "Overall, mobile financial services can reduce financial exclusion by 5 percent to 20 percent through 2020 and increase gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 5 percent, with Pakistan, for instance, potentially seeing a 3 percent uplift," the study said. It added that imp...

Source

Reuters (link opens in a new window)

Nestl? to Continue (BoP) Expansion in Philippines

Consumer goods giant Nestlé Philippines Inc. will be investing more in the country in the coming years, in a bid to offer new products to more markets, particularly consumers on the extreme top and bottom of the economic pyramid. In an interview with the Inquirer on Thursday, Nestlé Philippines chairman and chief executive John Martin Miller said the company, while already serving a wide spectrum of Filipino consumers, still had markets that were largely untapped. "W...

Source

Inquirer.net (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

The Universal Charger for Just About Any Gadget Battery

ASPEN -- If you can pry the lithium ion battery out of your device, you can probably charge it with Fenix International’s noteworthy USB charger. And you won’t need an annoying adapter, either. The company developed the charger for use in Uganda and other developing world countries. It’s part of a whole suite of products Fenix designed to help local people to become one-stop electricity providers. But you can use it yourself, too. At the bottom of this post, you can see the ...

Source

The Atlantic (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa