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Safaricom Subscribers Hit 3 Million
Mobile phone service provider Safaricom has attained the three million active subscriber mark ahead of its fifth year birthday next month. Aside from installing a new highly advanced Intelligent Network (IN) platform, our growth this year has been largely driven by our rural expansion, and a range of new products and services, chief executive officer Michael Joseph said. He described the signing of the three millionth subscriber as a momentous feat. ...
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Business Impacts on Millennium Development Goals: A Virtuous Cycle or a Coin Toss?
A new World Business Council for Sustainable Development report profiles corporate initiatives to alleviate poverty, but focuses less attention on how business may confound such goals. The notion that business plays an important role in alleviating poverty and other United Nations ( UN ) Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs )...
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Fair Returns, Job Creation, Not ?Just Charity? Is Path To Success For Business In Developing Eco
Mixed awareness and understanding of the Millennium Development Goals among many companies and how the MDGs relate to business Africa least likely to attract investment, most in need of it, report says ( CSRwire ) New York -- In an in-depth survey, fielded by Edelman, the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of Harvard’s Kennedy School o...
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Analysis: Private Sector – Key to Economic Growth
The private sector only gets a brief mention in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet it is business - entrepreneurs, employers, investors and workers - who are best positioned to help Africa achieve the Goals. Take Goal 1, perhaps the most important of the MDGs, which sets the target of halving poverty by 2015. This will not happen unless there is sustained economic growth in Africa at a minimum level of seven percent. But such growth will only come as a result of private sector effor...
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African nations fare poorly in business rankings by Andrew Balls
Poor African countries impose far more obstacles to setting up and operating businesses and creating jobs than any other part of the world, the World Bank said on Monday. For the first time, the bank?s Doing Business report provided an overall ranking for the ease of conducting business in its 155 countries, at the behest of Paul Wolfowitz, who took over as bank president in June. In the past it has only listed the top performers, partly to avoid offending those at the bottom...
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New Hope for SMEs
The Small Business Credit Guarantee Trust (SBCGT) is to be transformed into a finance institution that will provide financial services to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). As early as next year, the trust, which will also undergo a name change to be more reflective of its new role, will start lending money to SMEs. The institution will lend out money to individuals and groups at market related interest rates to avoid market distortions. As a micro lending institution,...
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Solar House System changes rural economy in Bangladesh
The World Bank-funded Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development (RERED) project, which has a target to install 50,000 Solar Home Systems (SHSs) in remote rural areas, has achieved a notable success three years ahead of the schedule, reports UNB. Three special ingredients - creative partnerships, clever technical designs and financing - have contributed to the success of Solar Home Systems, said a World Bank press release. Infrastructure Development Company Ltd...
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Capitec Gives Mzansi a Run for Its Money in Rural Areas
The cracks are starting to show in the Mzansi bank account, launched last year by South Africa’s large retail banks, as smaller banks offer cheaper banking and extend services to previously neglected areas. South African banks launched the low-cost Mzansi account last October in an effort to provide affordable and accessible banking to the poor in accordance with the financial services charter, which stipulates banks must provide services within 20 km of 80% of all people in living standa...
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