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Villagers Generate Own Hydro-Electric Power, by Mwangi Mumero
A small rural group in Meru South has shattered the myth that only giant corporates like KenGen can generate hydro electric power. Having been repeatedly snubbed by the Kenya Power and Lighting Company in their attempt to get connected to the national grid, 150 members of Baraani Hydro-electric Self Help group have generated power from a local river and distributed it to over 36 households. We can now light up our houses, iron clothes, charge mobile phones and watch television p...
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- The Nation (Nairobi)
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Harnessing Creativity to Boost Developing Economies, by Mario Osava
The U.N. estimates that the creative industries -- which encompass a wide range of activities, from the movie and music industries to fashion and computer software -- represent seven percent of global GDP, the equivalent of 1.3 billion dollars this year. It is also a sector that is growing at a faster rate than the world economy in general. In the United States, Miguez noted, the intellectual property sector accounts for eight percent of GDP and generates employment for 12 percent of the c...
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- IPS
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GE looking to developing nations for future growth
Sixty percent of General Electric Co.’s growth in the next decade will come from developing countries, with revenue from China alone expected to top $5 billion in 2005, GE’s top executive said yesterday at the company’s annual meeting. This is a great time for your company, because we are outperforming in a slow-growth world, chief executive Jeff Immelt told shareholders. The industrial, financial, and media powerhouse has won 70 percent of China’s commitme...
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- Associated Press
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What’s The Best Tech Device For The World’s Poor? by Tony KontzerWed
Efforts to get information technology into the hands of people in Third World nations are a huge cultural imperative and a significant business opportunity. But what form those efforts should take is a matter of debate, if a keynote panel discussion Wednesday at Sand Hill Group’s Software 2005 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., is any indication. Much of the discussion, which provided a welcome respite from all the talk of business processes and product strategy, revolved around two in...
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- InformationWeek
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Flies, Fish and a South African Success Story, by Ed Stoddard
Mpho Mashila has never caught a fish in her life but she ties a mean fly. The decoy insects (called flies) tied by her and other women in the South African squatters camp where she lives are so popular with fly fishing aficionados in the United States that Mashila and others are being reeled out of poverty. I was trained for four months and then I became a trainer. I now train the other women how to tie flies, she said from behind a table cluttered with the tools of her tr...
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- Reuters
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UN commission calls on Africa to commit to information and knowledge economy
With information and communication technologies (ICT) spinning off new industries in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today called on the continent’s governments to commit themselves to policies that create information and knowledge economies. Already Africa’s ICT environment was leading to the creation of technology parks, globally-operating call centres, cyber-cities and a growing software development sector that was seeking a share of the global $2...
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- UN News Centre
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Aspen to Produce New U.S. Aids Drugs, Sell Them in Africa, by Tamar Kahn
Aspen’s head of strategic trade, Stavros Nicolau, said Gilead would provide Aspen with the ingredients and technology to make the drugs, and Aspen would seek licensing approval in African countries where they were not registered. Aspen had lodged an application to register Viread with the Medicines Control Council and planned to follow suit with Truvada shortly. Nicolau declined to comment on projected sales volumes, but said the African market had strong potential as only about 7%-8% ...
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- Business Day (Johannesburg)
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In Ethiopian Hills, Five Years to Create Something Out of Nothing, by Helene Cooper
A year ago, Koraro villagers scraped together the money to pay for a seventh-grade teacher, then put the class under the tree since there was no room in the school. Paying for an eighth grade is beyond the village’s means at this point. If the rich world is actually going to deliver on its promise to halve global poverty by 2015, then it has to start somewhere. It may as well be here in this village, deep in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Province, where food is scarce and water even s...
- Source
- The New York Times
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