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

Can tiny science bring big solutions to world’s poor?, by Catherine Brahic

Nanotechnologies could, for instance, help filter water, provide cheap, clean energy, rapidly diagnose diseases, make information and communication technologies affordable to developing economies, and make food production cheaper and more efficient. Full article available here. ...

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SciDev.Net

MIT?s Nicholas Negroponte pushes a cheap PC for the rest of the world

The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution...Major companies from Hewlett-Packard to Microsoft to Dupont, facing saturated markets in the richest industrial countries, have show...

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Red Herring

Tiny Loans Stimulate the Appetite for More, by Betsy Cummings

It used to be that a $50 microloan to start an embroidery kiosk or other modest enterprise was a gateway out of poverty for women in poor countries. Now, some of them are telling aid groups that that is no longer enough. Rather, they want serious money - in some cases, several thousand dollars - to build small businesses, hire employees and establish themselves in a developing marketplace. After almost three decades, the microloan movement has created a global network o...

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The New York Times

Poverty tops Davos summit agenda

Earlier this year I entered for the first time a favela (slum) in Brazil, and I have to say I was really moved,’ pharmaceutical chief Daniel Vasella, a co-chairman of the Forum’s 2005 annual meeting, said. Vasella - who heads Novartis, the Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant that has enjoyed eight consecutive years of record multi-billion dollar earnings - opted to argue the case for ’the three billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. ...

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Aljazeera.Net

Q&A: World poverty:

Peter Mandelson, Jeffrey Sachs and Barbara Stocking on whether the world is taking poverty seriously enough Jeffrey Sachs: Business makes trade and I believe the contribution that the private sector and large multi-national companies make to the world are largely positive. But anti-globalisation groups are right to point at shortfalls in the current system. We need to work to shape the rules of the game to provide for a balanced situation where trade ? and the infl...

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Times Online

Putting Global Concerns to a Vote, by John Rossant

In the end, the results were surprising for a group whose largest single component is businessmen. The ’winner’ was ’poverty’ -- 64.4% of the participants in Davos seem to think global poverty is the top issue world leaders must tackle. It was followed closely by ’equitable globalization,’ though there were multiple views on what that meant exactly. Full article available ...

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BusinessWeek

Are you ready for Globalisation 2.0?, by Tim Weber

In Nigeria, the average mobile phone generates $55 (?29.15) in revenue every month. In Rwanda and Mozambique, two of the world’s poorest nations, it is $20 (?10.60). It’s not that Africans are mobile phone crazy. Rather, many phone owners make money by reselling airtime to their local communities. Full article available here. ...

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BBC News

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Davos: Stars, Snow, and Seminars

Celebs and business luminaries discuss social change at the World Economic Forum, which has a key theme of reaching poor consumers While it’s all too easy to poke fun at the ’celeb-ness’ of Davos, Gere, Jolie, and Stone will be joining the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan professor of business administration, in serious discussions of how best to promote economic growth and development in Africa, South ...

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BusinessWeek