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

UN postal agency unveils plan for migrants to send money back home electronically

Migrant workers around the world will soon be able to send money back home by efficient and reliable electronic transfers, eliminating the paper and manual work now involved with traditional postal money orders, under a joint project announced today by the United Nations postal agency. ?There is a strong trend for overseas workers to send part of their earnings home to their families, but the market response to this issue has so far been inadequate,? Universal Postal Union (UPU) Director-G...

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UN News Centre

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migrants

Cameroon: Farming in the Dark

Knowledge is power, and lack of knowledge about markets and prices is a key factor in keeping poor farmers around the world ?dirt poor.? African producers of cocoa and coffee, for example, earn as little as one twelfth of the international market rate for their crops. In the dark over the prices being realized in local as well as world markets, they remain at the mercy of middlemen, traders and corporations. What is true in Africa, is equally true in Asia or Latin America. Increasing ...

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UN News Centre

Govt to set up business incubators to gear up SMEs

Vice-chairman of the National Planning Commission (NPC) Dr. Shankar Sharma Tuesday said that the government was planning to allocate budget for the development of business incubation in order to gear up developmental and business activities. ?The government has taken business incubation as a positive initiative, as world experiences have shown, it ensures over 80 per cent success of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs),? Dr. Sharma said while addressing a workshop of stakeholders on ?E...

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The Rising Nepal

Micro Loans, Solid Returns, by Eric Uhlfelder, with Ilma Ajanovic

Microfinance funds lift poor entrepreneurs -- and benefit investors With about $200 of his own money and a $1,500 loan, Vahid Hujdur rented space in the old section of Sarajevo and started repairing, then reselling discarded industrial sewing machines. Eight years and several loans later, Hujdur now has 10 employees building, installing, and fixing industrial machinery. Hujdur didn’t get his initial loan from a local bank. They were asking for guarantees that were impo...

Source

BusinessWeek

Afghanistan to auction mobile phone licences, by Elizabeth Judge

War-ravaged Afghanistan has become the latest frontier for mobile phone companies looking for unsaturated markets. The country, which is seeking to rebuild itself after the US invasion, is to auction off two mobile phone licences based on the GSM (global system for mobile communications) standard used in Europe. The licences are expected to go for millions of pounds each. But the Government hopes that the auction, which will take place during the next two months, will also raise up to $200...

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The Times

Microcredit Makes Strong Inroads in Latin America and Caribbean, by Gustavo Gonz?lez

Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1976, once again pointed out that the lowest-income clients have the highest payback rates of all, when they are given access to loans at reasonable interest rates, without having to put up collateral. He also underlined that 56 percent of the Grameen Bank’s clients in Bangladesh (who are mainly women) have been able to leave behind extreme poverty. According to the main report presented at the summit, of the 54.8 million poor c...

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IPS

7,000 Women in Chipata to Benefit From Information Project, Kingsley Kaswende

Over 7,000 women in rural Chipata are to benefit from agricultural marketing information project called the Chipata Women’s Mobile SMS project initiated by One World Africa (OWA) and Celtel Zambia. The project is an information for development project that aims to help women in rural areas of Chipata to access agricultural marketing price information and to disseminate the availability of produce for potential buyers through the use of SMS (short message service). One World Africa...

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The Post (Lusaka)

Google foundation may invest in for-profit firms, by Jim Hopkins

Challenging convention, Google’s maverick founders might join other entrepreneurs trying a capitalist approach to philanthropy. The nascent Google Foundation is weighing investments in for-profit firms that also pursue worthy causes. That’s a switch from mainstream philanthropy, where money goes to non-profit charities. Complete story here. ...

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USA Today