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

UN intellectual rights protector places more developing country issues on agenda

Saying it has made a major shift in priorities and direction since its last meeting two years ago, a committee on development in the United Nations agency on intellectual property rights says developing countries must devise policies and strategies that turn their traditional knowledge, healing arts and culture into national assets. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) says it is holding meetings this month and next to respond to a decision by its General Assembly...

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UN News Centre

Developing world needs knowledge more than hardware, speakers say, by K. Oanh Ha

Is the digital divide dead? Yes, concluded speakers at a Santa Clara University symposium Thursday where participants agreed that throwing computers at the developing world isn’t the answer to global inequity. What’s really needed is a bridge to close the knowledge divide, according to the speakers. The problem comes down to much more than technology,’’ said Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of the university’s Center for Science, Technology and Society, which ...

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The Mercury News

As New Vietnam Forges Ahead, Entrepreneurs Take Limelight

The big change is in the attitude to capitalism. In the past five years, an estimated 140,000 private businesses in Vietnam have been registered. Private companies account for one-fifth of GDP, and are virtually the only job-creators in a country where 1 million young people join the work force each year. Drawn to Vietnam a decade ago, Nike, the country’s single largest private employer with some 130,000 workers, produces some VND11 trillion worth of footwear, making Vietnam the larges...

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Dow Jones Newswire

IFC and Banque MISR Expand Services to Egyptian Micro and Small Enterprises

The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, has signed an advisory services agreement with Banque Misr to extend the development of its micro and small enterprises operations to the bank?s branches in underserved areas of Egypt. The advisory services will help Banque Misr provide micro and small enterprises with investment and working capital financing. Banque MISR will extend loans to entrepreneurs who are unable to expand their businesses becaus...

Poor countries are ’not mining their green gold’, by Mike Shanahan

In theory, screening biological resources for marketable products ? a process known as ’bioprospecting’ ? could contribute to sustainable development. Attracted by the prospect of new drugs, foreign pharmaceutical companies would screen biological resources (such as plants and corals) from a developing nation. When a successful drug comes out of their research, the company would share the profits with the country that the resource was taken from. Agreements would ensure that benefi...

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SciDev.Net

The Chinese Menu (for Development), by Douglass C. North

First, there are many paths to development. The key is creating an institutional structure derived from your particular cultural institutions that provide the proper incentives -- not slavishly imitating Western institutions. Second, the world is constantly changing in fundamental ways. The basics of economic theory are essential elements of every economy, but the problems countries face today are set in new and novel frameworks of beliefs, institutions, technologies, and radically lower inform...

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The Wall Street Journal

ABP starts investing in Third World micro credits, by Leen Preesman

ABP has said it has started investing in micro credits for small entrepreneurs in the Third World. During the first quarter of 2005 ABP has invested ?5m in an unnamed fund for micro credits. This means more than 14,000 small enterprises are being supported by an average loan of ?350, aimed at providing help to an escape from poverty. ABP said it has chosen for this kind of investment, because ?it offers perspectives of reasonable returns and limited risks. Moreover micro credits will ...

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IPE.com

Mobile phones ring changes for world’s poor, by Shafiq Alam

With just four calls from a mobile phone, remote Bangladeshi farmer Mir Jahid Hussein can now ensure he gets the best price for his seasonal jute seeds -- something he could once only dream of. As it is for tens of millions of poor rural-dwellers in developing countries from Bangladesh to Botswana, mobile phone technology is revolutionising Hussein’s life for the better, enabling him to cut out cheating middlemen and deal directly with buyers from district markets. What 10 years a...

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Sify