NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Rwanda: Rural Areas to Access Solar Energy

Excerpt: The president of Solar Energy Africa, John Ssemanda, has said that the organization has an ambitious project of accessing solar energy to rural areas to boost economic development. He said this to Bugesera residents, last week, while touring a solar energy site that was installed in Maranyondo village in Bugesera District. He noted that solar light Africa project was introduced in Rwanda by the first lady, Jeannette Kagame, the patron for the Solar Light Africa in Rwanda.

Source

AllAfrica.com (link opens in a new window)

Facing global challenges while turning a profit

Excerpt: Eighteen months ago two veteran business executives, Brian Richardson and Charles Rowlinson, set up a cellphone-based banking company with the sole purpose of serving the estimated 16 million poor people in South Africa who do not have access to basic banking facilities - around 60 percent of the population. ? Today Wizzit employs 800 previously unemployed Wizzkids to promote its product. The company is on target to break even this year. ? Many companies ...

Source

The International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

’One lakh’ car to roll out from 3-4 places: Tata

Excerpt: Tata Group Chief Ratan Tata on Friday said the ambitious Rs 1 lakh car will be manufactured from three-four places, including West Bengal and Uttaranchal. It will be in West Bengal, it will be in Uttaranchal. It will be manufactured from three-four places, Tata said here after meeting the Finance Minister. He said, the launch of the car would create a new paradigm in low-cost personal transport, carve out a new market segment and reach a broader base o...

Source

The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

In War-Torn Congo, Going Wireless to Reach Home

Excerpt: As surely as the light bulb and the automobile before them, the cellphone and text messaging are radically changing the way people live in the developing world. In widespread use for about five years in much of Africa, technology long taken for granted by the world’s rich has made life easier, safer and more prosperous for the world’s poor. For the first time, millions of Africans are able to communicate easily with people who are beyond shouting distance. Farmers and...

Source

The Washington Post (link opens in a new window)

High finance reaches Bangladesh’s poor

Excerpt: Tiny loans for Bangladesh’s rural poor became part of a groundbreaking financial product on Thursday through one of the world’s first microcredit securitisations. BRAC, a Bangladeshi anti-poverty non-governmental organisation (NGO), said the securitisation would provide it with $180 million of financing over six years, helping it to make small loans to some of the poorest people in the world. BRAC’s deal is the latest example of the microcr...

Source

Reuters (link opens in a new window)

The Myth of the New India

Opinion Excerpt: INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story. So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India’s leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, The Global India...

Source

The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Small generator aims to empower Africans

Excerpt: Originally created to give an emergency kick-start to stalled boat engines, the sleek little South African-designed machine, pumped with one foot, can charge a cell phone battery in five minutes or a car battery in 30. The device’s creators, who plan to distribute it across swaths of Africa far from the power grid, hope it will energize economic development efforts as effectively as it does dead cell phones. Residents of Musheri Center, fit but fatigued from bicycling lon...

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Peso power brings hope to poor

Excerpt: E very weekend Hilario Amador makes the short journey to the city centre of Zacatecas where he deposits 120 pesos with Patrimonio Hoy, a self-help building scheme run by Cemex, Mexico’s largest cement company. The money is equal to about 20 per cent of his weekly wage at a local abattoir and it has allowed the 38-year-old to receive regular supplies of the materials he needs to tile the floor, repair the roof and build two extra rooms...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America