NextBillion - A WDI Publication

ACCRA, Ghana -- The sparkling new bank, down the street from Accra’s bustling Makola market, looks like a financial institution anywhere: Six busy teller windows, a new accounts desk, air conditioning holding the steamy heat outside at bay. But for Ghanaians who have never had access to banking services before, it represents a revolution. After years of seeking small loans from loan sharks, family members and non-profit micro-credit programs, they now have what they never had befo...

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Chicago Tribune (link opens in a new window)

By Tricia Duryee Chris Brookfield sees similarities between building a technology startup and lifting people out of poverty. As odd as it sounds, the former Seattle venture capitalist is doing just that by applying his investing skills to microfinance. I have to take the same hard analytical approach to this as I did in venture capital, he said. In structure and in the process, it’s similar. Earlier this month, Brookfield decided to lea...

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Seattle Times (link opens in a new window)

Jitters Over Rising Interest Rates

Stocks in developing countries tumbled yesterday, extending one of their biggest losing streaks in nearly a decade, as growing jitters about the global economic outlook amid rising interest rates prompted investors to abandon riskier markets world-wide. The pullback in markets as far-flung as Turkey, India, Russia and Brazil has broad ramifications for U.S. investors. Emerging-market stocks have been the world’s top performers ov...

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Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Chasing your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Go, look for your fortune at the bottom of the pyramid instead. That, in a line, summed up a day-long summit on ?Disruptive Innovation? titled ?Seeing What?s Next? by Harvard don and innovation guru Clayton M Christensen, organised by indiatimes.com in the city today. Professor Christensen, who teaches at the Harvard Business School, agreed there was really little difference between his ?Disruptive Innovation? theory and ...

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The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Mary Jo Foley Cut-rate PC/hardware Windows XP Starter Edition bundles aren’t Microsoft’s only solution for bringing computing to the masses. Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled a new financing program designed to make PCs more affordable to emerging-market customers on May 22, the day before the kick-off of its annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle. The new pay-as-you-go program and associated metering technology that enables it are k...

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Foxnews.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Lighting Off the Grid

Sitting in a brightly lit classroom at the Stanford Business School three years ago, Matt Scott got to wondering what it would take to light the rest of the world. Artificial lighting may not seem a necessity like food or shelter, but 1.6 billion people around the globe lack access to electricity and the on-off switches we take for granted. Inspired by the Light Up the World Foundation, which promotes the use of energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Scott, now 31, traveled to India and ...

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Time (link opens in a new window)

By Abraham M. George ? According to the World Bank, by the broader international definition of poverty ($2.00 or less per day per person), there are more poor people in the world today than there were a quarter century ago. Yet, during the same period, the strategy for alleviating poverty across practically every developing nation has remained essentially the same. The assumptions that underlie the present approach to combating poverty are flawed on at least three count...

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The George Foundation (link opens in a new window)

Excerpt:? PAHF aims to provide long-term solutions by helping establish local African production facilities for essential medical products, to increase their availability and affordability. It selects vital medical technologies, such as AD syringes and ITNs, which are identified by the WHO as effective at preventing or treating one of Africa’s major diseases. It targets cost-effective medical supplies which can be manufactured from raw materials available in Africa. PAHF wor...

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Vanguard (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa