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Ugandan firm gets African ICT award

Original post here: http://www.andnetwork.com/app?service=direct/0/Feed/$DirectLink&sp=l6023 A Ugandan based computer company, Crystal Clear Software Limited, has won the African Small Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMME) 2004 Award. The company was recognised for showing a balance between business skills (70 per cent of total weight) and social agenda (30 per c...

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African News Dimension

eBay?s Founder Starts Giving

Pierre Omidyar on his $100 million gift to Tufts?with a few strings attached. Pierre Omidyar, 38, is one of the world?s richest idealists. With stock in eBay worth $8.4 billion, the founder of the auction giant and his wife, Pam, are starting to give money away. In early November they made their biggest gift yet: $100 million to Tufts University, where they met as undergrads. But the money came with an unusual stipulation: It can be invested only in microfinance?tiny business loan...

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FORTUNE (link opens in a new window)

IFC to set up micro equity fund

International Finance Corporation (IFC) is all set to enter the microfinance market in India. The global lending body together with Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation Venture Capital and Bharat Yuvak Shakti Trust (BYST) are planning to set up a micro equity fund to help small entrepreneurs. ?The fund, to be set up with an initial corpus of $5 million (Rs 22.5 crore), would begin operations by April 2006,? said Vipul Prakash, regional manager, South Asia, IFC.

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Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

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South Asia

“I saved someone from a poisonous snake bite after I learnt about first aid from the computer.”

DIPICHI, South Africa (Reuters) -- It is hard to believe that 19 shiny flat screen computers can cure the ills of this tiny community in South Africa’s arid north where people battle every day against poverty, AIDS, illiteracy and hunger. Yet U.S. computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co. and South African President Thabo Mbeki are promoting Dipichi’s smart new IT lab as a blueprint for how technology can trigger growth and tackle poverty across the world’s poorest continent.

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CNN (link opens in a new window)

Microcredit Turns into Major Headache in Kenya

The power of microcredit to pull people out of destitution has been celebrated around the world during 2005, designated the International Year of Microcredit by the United Nations. In Kenya, however, the concept of microcredit risks losing its bloom. This follows concerns about a number of self-described microfinance institutions that have sprung up across the country over recent years, and which seem more intent on exploiting their clients than helping them work their wa...

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Mail & Guardian Online (link opens in a new window)

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Sub-Saharan Africa

I’d Like to Teach the World to Type

David Kirkpatrick WANT TO GRAB SOMEBODY’S ATTENTION IN the tech world? How about mentioning that you got e-mails from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell the night before, all of them weighing in on your current obsession. That’s what Nick Negroponte--legendary founder of MIT’s Media Lab and techno- impresario extraordinaire--said to me last month after he came offstage at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine. Negroponte had just presented the idea that engaged t...

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Fortune, Print

Switch to the Low-Income Customer

?We?ve changed our standard of innovation so we can serve more of the world?s consumers. So it?s now a better brand experience for the target consumer and a lower product cost structure than the competition can deliver.? Gilbert Cloyd, Procter & Gamble?s chief technology officer, unfolds a disposable nappy on a table at the company?s Cincinnati headquarters. With a lightly elasticated edge and a basic inner lining, it is a prototype that, if proven commerciall...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

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Latin America

Nokia and Grameen Foundation USA Join Forces to Bring Affordable Telecommunications to Rural Village

Nokia and Grameen Foundation USA today announced a collaboration to bring affordable, accessible telecommunications to rural villages in Africa through microfinance. This collaboration builds on GFUSA’s global Village Phone initiative that helps people living in rural areas start self-sustaining businesses while providing affordable telecommunications to their communities. Access to affordable and reliable telecommunications services is a lifeline for rural communities and a crit...

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Yahoo! Finance (link opens in a new window)

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North Africa & Near East