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Editorials – Technology, The Poverty Fighter
The World Bank and an Indian software association plan to invest as much as $1 billion in grassroots technology businesses. Corporations should also step up such investments. By promoting local innovation and entrepreneurialism, the tech-for-the-masses movement could not only stimulate economic development in the countryside but also help find the key to turning the world’s poor into the next major source of global growth. ...
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- BusinessWeek International
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Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has found a way to enrich the poor.
Mr. de Soto points out that multinational corporations are typically among the most direct beneficiaries of his work. Indeed, the formalization of developing country economies may well be the missing link that paves the way for multinational corporations in many industries to enter or expand in these countries, not in their stereotypical role as exploiters of cheap labor and extractors of raw materials, but as seekers of customers, talent, and capital. Trillions of dollars of dead c...
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- strategy+business
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Business & Development 2004
Mark Malloch Brown and Robert Davies argue that Engaging the poor in markets as consumers, employees or entrepreneurs and providing them with services are valid business opportunities - and are increasingly attractive ones as many of the less populous western markets mature and reach saturation point for many goods and services. ...
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- Financial Times
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Microsoft plans Asian XP starter
Microsoft plans to offer a new version of the Windows operating system for beginning computer users in Thailand and Malaysia starting this September, as part of government-sponsored programs aimed at providing more affordable personal computers in those countries. Read full article here. ...
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- CNN
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Renewal fund seeks private capital for loans market
Afghanistan’s economy grew 20 per cent last year and sectors such as construction, communications and retail are booming. But the country’s financial sector is barely emerging from the dark ages and middle-sized businesses that fall outside the micro-credit market are hard pressed to get loans or attract investors. The fund aims to address a gap in the finance market for companies requiring initial investments of $500,000 to $10m, a finance official familiar with the plan said.&quo...
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- Financial Times
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Microcredit is reducing poverty, one loan at a time
Today, microcredit has reached more than 67 million poor people around the world. At any moment, as much as $6 billion in microcredit loans may be in circulation, with huge diversification and minimal loss. These loans, made at market rates, prove conclusively that the poor are not only creditworthy but have a real need to access credit. Read full article here. ...
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- Pugent Sound Business Jounral
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Kyrgyzstan: “Business incubators” help to reduce poverty
Promoting small businesses is one of the most effective ways of reducing poverty in a poor country like Kyrgyzstan, where government figures suggest at least 40 percent of the population of five million live below the poverty line. The country’s President Askar Akaev subscribes to this view and he has been busy pushing ’business incubators’ as one way of assisting small business enterprises. ...
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- IRIN News
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The Future: Tech-savvy shanty towns
Why should businesses think of the poor as a market at all? These are people, thanks to participation in underground economies or aggregate buying, who have some disposable income; who are poorly served today; and who have tremendous potential as a future market. Read full article here. ...
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- Red Herring
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