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Microcredit Is Becoming Profitable, Which Means New Players and New Problems
Large commercial financial institutions, including Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, are now showing interest in microfinance, which could increase access to credit for the poor. At the same time, challenges remain in attracting private capital, lowering costs and interest rates, and developing regulation. More than 500 microfinance institutions around the world have loaned $7 billion to about 30 million small-business people, says Weigelt, but 300 million could benefit from microcredit to start...
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- Knowledge@Wharton
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South Africa shows interest in India’s Simputer
South Africa has shown keen interest in using a no-frills computer developed by Indian scientists, especially for rural development. Vinay Deshpande, whose company Encore Software developed the Simputer that has revolutionised the use of computers by not so literate people in rural India, was confident the first machines would be in use in South Africa within a month. The Simputers would be used for applications involving e-governance, education ...
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- Indo-Asian News Service
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Brazil Opens Its Arms to Africa, by Rebecca Wanjiku and Mar Del Plata
Having tasted the fruits of freedom resulting from the use of open source software, Brazil has opened its doors to African governments willing to adopt the software for the management of Top Level Domain (TLD) registries. And the governments have seized the moment and taken advantage of the emerging south/south solidarity spearheaded by the South American power house. Kenya was the first to train on how to use the software,Tanzania soon followed suit, while Mozambique and Sudan are lining...
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- Highway Africa News Agency
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Capitalism at the Crossroads:
Using the Resources of Capitalism to Solve ?The World?s Most Difficult Problems Despite decades of unprecedented growth and the expansion of capitalism into most of the world, prosperity has only spread to a fraction of the earth?s population, while pollution and corruption has encircled the globe. As Stuart Hart proposes in Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World?s Most D...
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- CSRWire
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Allanblackia to the Rescue of the Rural Poor?, by Domfe George
Allanblackia oil made out of the seed of the tree, is a new commodity with the ability to substitute palm oil for some applications, he noted. Dr. Cobbinah said the project initiative builds on public-private partnership between Unilever, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Technoserve and a number of Ghanaian governmental and non-governmental organizations. Unilever wants to secure a sustainable supply of the seeds, while the other parties promote a socially acceptable and environm...
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- Public Agenda (Accra)
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Ethiopia: Prime Minister Promises Internet Access for All
Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth, will expand Internet coverage from a handful of users to the entire country in three years, the prime minister said Tuesday. Premier Meles Zenawi said information technology lay at the heart of transforming the impoverished country where millions are dependent on foreign aid. The government is working with U.S. technology giant Cisco Systems to boost its coverage. We are fully committed to ensuring that as many of our poor as po...
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- IRIN
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Motorola breaks ?poor? price barrier
The phone Motorola is designing has immense potential. The company is in line to sell 6 million immediately to carriers in poor countries, with the additional potential to reach 100 million per year in shipments. Nokia is also in the game. In January, the company said it plans to start selling a low-cost GSM phone using a Texas Instruments chip. And not to be outdone, Qualcomm, in February, said it has designed low-cost chips for CDMA phones for Latin America, India, and China. ...
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- Red Herring
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Cheap computers for emerging markets. How is that going to evolve?
This year, there is a big push to make cheap computers for emerging markets. How is that going to have to evolve? A $300 computer is still going to be too expensive for many, probably, in Russia, India and other places. Well, that’s not really true. The expensive thing is the connectivity. Getting Internet connectivity is expensive. If all they had to do was pay for the computer--$300--and the communications were free, then we’d see that PC usage would be very, very big. Iron...
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- Portalino
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