NextBillion - A WDI Publication

NextWealth: Creating a Next Wave in India’s IT and BPO Industry

During the early days of the Indian information technology outsourcing industry, Sridhar Mitta’s biggest challenge was convincing American companies that India was a viable destination to send their work. Mitta was with Wipro, at the time a fledging IT division of a vegetable oil company. He was, in fact, the very first employee of the company’s IT business and later went on to become its chief technology officer and president of the global research and development business. During Mi...

Source

India Knowledge@Wharton (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Does Microfinance for Profit Hurt Women?

The commercialization of microfinance has been blamed for a lot of troubling trends, from prompting the clampdown in Andhra Pradesh to muddying the industry’s benign image as a development tool to help the poor. But one impact that has been largely overlooked is its impact on women. One of the hallowed truths about microlending has been that it works best when loans are made to women, a...

Source

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

Slideshow: Inzozi Nziza, a Social Enterprise, Creates a Market for Ice Cream in Rwanda

It’s an unlikely place for an ice cream shop, and an even more unlikely batch of people to be running it. Inzozi Nziza, or "Sweet Dreams" in Kinyarwanda, is Rwanda’s first and only local ice cream shop. Located in the small university town of Butare, it celebrated its one year anniversary this week. While its struggles have been great, from importing a soft-serve ice cream machine into this tiny landlocked country where only one person knows (kind-of) how to fix it,&...

Source

Dowser (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Embrace Warms Up Premature Babies At the Bottom of the Pyramid

A mother living in a rural village outside of Bangalore, India gives birth to a baby two months prematurely. Her family cannot afford to go to the city hospital in Bangalore, so her husband, who raises silkworms that he warms under lamps, decides to care for the baby in the same way. A few day later, their baby dies. Stopping this tragedy - there are 20 million low birth weight and premature babies born each year - is the primary mission of Embrac...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Tags

poverty alleviation

Energy is Central to Development

Energy , it seems, is the Cinderella of development policy. Listen to governments, aid agencies and the big foundations, and the priorities have been malaria, maternal mortality, vaccinations, HIV - health has hoovered up attention and aid dollars in the last decade. Education has come a close second. Now attention is slowly moving to include agriculture and food security, but the rhetoric is ...

Source

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

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

’Buy Local’ Program Aims to Boost Value of Aid to Haiti

One week after the devastating quake that struck Haiti in January 2010, journalist Mark Danner wrote a New York Times op-ed that warned the outpouring of international sympathy and support, although remarkable, would buoy unrealistic expectations about the prospe...

Source

The Christian Science Monitor (link opens in a new window)

Africa’s Women Mean Business ? But They Need Finance

Inclusion was the big theme of the African Development Bank annual meeting in Lisbon last week, an acknowledgement that impressive economic growth numbers don’t tell the whole story. As the president of the AfDB, Donald Kaberuka, acknowledged at the start of proceedings, the bank had got it wrong in Tunisia and Egypt - although as one bank official pointed out, good things had been accomplished in Tunisia by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in ...

Source

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

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

HBS Cases: Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

In many developing countries it’s common for a person to have a mobile phone but not a bank account. In fact, more than 1 billion people fit this description, and the number is only likely to increase. To that end, many companies are considering how to give residents access to banking services via their handsets. The GSM Association predicts that by 2012, nearly 300 million of the previously "unbanked" will be using some form of mobile bank...

Source

Harvard Business School (link opens in a new window)