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

China looks at India for farm credit models

Venkatesan Vembu As China goes about its endeavour to build a ?new socialist countryside? and address the problems that poverty-stricken farmers face in accessing farm credit, it is looking to India?s successful microfinance model for inspiration. On Saturday, China?s leading?University tied up with HSBC to research and devise a microfinance model to serve the country?s farmers, many of whom do not have access to any form of credit. The three-year...

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DNA India (link opens in a new window)

Water Support Fading for Private Water Aid

For more than a decade, the idea that private companies would be able to bring water to the world’s poor has been a mantra of development policies promoted by international lending agencies and many governments. It has not happened. In the past decade, according to a private water suppliers’ trade group, private companies have managed to extend water service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who need it. Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to clea...

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International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

Twenty-two development goals for SAARC launched

By Nazrul Islam Bangladesh?s Foreign Minister, Mr. Morshed Khan has formally launched 22 development goals of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), aiming to regional poverty reduction in line with the UN millennium development goals to be reached by 2015. ?The leaders of South Asian countries are now committed to reduce poverty in a participatory manner, provide food security, guarantee livelihood, improve health care, ensure quality education and enhanc...

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New Kerala (link opens in a new window)

The impact of mobile phones.

In 1979 Elizabeth Blunt was sent to Nigeria by the BBC to cover the country’s elections, as the then military head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, prepared to hand over to an elected civilian government. She recently returned to the country to revisit some of the people and places she had known all those years ago. I was back in Nigeria recently, and trying to find a woman called Dada who I had met on my first visit to the country, 27 years ago. I peered at my fad...

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BBC (link opens in a new window)

In many emerging countries it is easier to roll out a modern mobile network than the miles of copper required for a fixed line network. Mobile offers low income subscribers more affordable prepay mobile telecommunications combined with a degree of cost control not possible with fixed line. These factors help explain the phenomenal growth of mobile subscriber numbers in emerging markets such as Africa. where according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) mobile subscribers have jump...

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This Day Online (link opens in a new window)

A new report examines the challenges and opportunities facing ultra-low-cost segment of the handset

A new report examines the challenges and opportunities facing ultra-low-cost segment of the handset market. ’The Emerging Market Handset Programme (EMHP) has achieved a lot since its inception in October 2004’. ’However, this year will prove crucial to the development of the ultra-low-cost handset (ULCH) segment, a factor that may have encouraged the GSMA to extend its endorsement of Motorola as the Emerging Market Handset vendor for six months from 1st July’, says Gavin Byrne, l...

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Electronics Talk (link opens in a new window)

While the value of poverty-reduction strategies designed to help the poor help themselves is now well-known, private sector investment in microfinance is still low. Microfinance - or the provision of credit to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans - has been a tool for poverty-reduction now for three decades. But just 5% of microcredit demand is currently fulfilled. Moreover, 95% of people in developing countries lack access to financial services, com...

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Ethical Corporation (link opens in a new window)

Charity needs to start to resemble a capitalist economy in which benefactors become consumers of soc

The problem is not in the spirit of the people; it is in the nature of the charity. Philanthropy needs to become philanthrocapitalism. Charity needs to start to resemble a capitalist economy in which benefactors become consumers of social investment. The fact is that Americans, and people in general, are not greedy. Many wealthy Americans are looking for ways to make a difference in the world. It’s time for charitable organizations to start to compete for their money. Firs...

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The Bard Observer (link opens in a new window)