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Professors rewarded for social and environmental work
In what can only be described as the Oscars of the business school world, eight of the world?s most socially-aware academics are to receive awards from the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education in New York on November 16. This annual awards ceremony, now in its sixth year, rewards MBA faculty who have integrated social and environmental issues into academic research, educational programmes, and business practice.
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Andrew Rugasira: ’Good African’ banks on the feel-good factor
Good African Coffee, available in Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, has not taken off as quickly as founder Andrew Rugasira would like. But, among coffee farmers in Uganda?s remote Rwenzori Mountains, it is an easy sell. The mountains? farmers have spent generations at the grubby first stage of the coffee production chain, lacking education, market knowledge, and electricity in their small farms at the base of the clouds. One farmer, Charles Kahitson, had never tasted brewed coffee...
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SME Toolkit Creates Opportunities for Small Businesses
This week, IFC and key stakeholders are meeting in Mumbai, India, to discuss the latest version of the IFC SME Toolkit ( www.smetoolkit.org ), an online program that provides support to small and medium business entrepreneurs worldwide. Sponsored jointly by ...
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A bank in every pocket?
Banking on mobile phones holds promise, provided regulators are willing to be flexible The idea that mobile phones bring economic benefits is now widely accepted. In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land lines, they substitute for travel, allow price data to be distributed more quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and generally ease the business of doing business. Leonard Waverman of the London B...
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Microfinance lenders are getting the message
Running a small bank that is big on microfinance can be tedious work. Take it from Omar Andaya, whose family owns Greenbank, a rural bank based in Butuan city in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Each week, Mr Andaya has to send out credit officers to collect loan payments of 500-1,000 pesos ($11.5-$23) from 32,000 micro-borrowers. But thanks to mobile phone banking, at least a thousand or so of Mr Andaya?s borrowers have began to simply ?text? the money to the ba...
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JPMorgan enters micro-finance field
JPMorgan has launched a micro-finance unit as part of its emerging markets strategy, becoming the latest investment bank to enter the fast-growing sector. Rapid expansion of the industry and the impressive profitability of many micro-finance organisations have stimulated investor interest in a sector that was largely the preserve of non-profit bodies or governments until a few years ago. ?This is a global initiative, and part and parcel of the investment bank?s growing reach in eme...
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Microentrepreneurship Award help financing dreams
Giving a man fish will feed him today, yet teaching him how to fish will provide food for a lifetime. The old Chinese axiom characterizes the philosophy of the Microentrepreneurship Award in China sponsored by Citigroup Foundation and hosted by the China Bank...
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U.S. plans $250 mln for African investment funds
The United States pledged on Monday to provide up to $250 million to jump-start three new African investment funds aimed at developing the continent’s capital markets so African businesses can more easily raise money. The announcement came on the final day of a five-day African visit by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson , who said Africa needs all the investment it can get from anywhere in the wor...
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