NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Hope and despair in micro-finance

These last few months have been marked by deals in the microfinance industry never witnessed before. With $12.5m into Spandana (of which $10m came from JM Financial), $11.5m in SKS Microfinance (majority from Silicon Valley-based Sequoia Capital) and a whopping $27m in Share (of which $25 m came from Dubai based Legatum Capital), suddenly all MFI CEOs seem to be talking about raising capital and doing it quick lest they miss the bus. But in a nascent industry MFIs large enough (with ...

Source

Business Standard, India (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific

Managing Globalization: To Reduce Poverty, Money isn’t Everything

How much can governments do to fight poverty? In South America, a couple of answers are emerging in the growing economies of Venezuela and Brazil. Both governments have publicly pledged billions of dollars to raise living standards - but have they succeeded? Overall income is moving upward in both countries, if for different reasons. Venezuela is riding the black tide of high-priced oil, while Brazil’s relatively firm economic policies have built confidence in its business prospec...

Source

International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

Eradicating Poverty Through Small Business Ventures

GUYANA Small Business Association (GSBA), in collaboration with Guyana Micro-Projects Programme (GMPP), is conducting a series of one-week training courses funded by the European Union (EU). They are being conducted at the GSBA Secretariat, Lot 160 Waterloo Street, North Cummingsburg, Georgetown, at no cost and interested persons can make contact at the address. A press release said the sessions between 5 p.m. and 9p.m. are intended to empower the disadvantaged through smal...

Source

Guyana Chronicle (link opens in a new window)

Upward Mobile-ity for India’s Poor

During the late 1990s, an often repeated story about India’s mobile revolution featured fishermen in the southern Indian state of Kerala who used their mobile phones to call wholesale agents before reaching the shore to check market prices. Considering that mobile calls used to cost 20 cents a minute in those days and were obviously limited to the affluent, the story appeared apocryphal to some. There is now research that has mapped the benefits to those fishermen. The study, by R...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Africa’s Village of Dreams

Sauri must be the luckiest village in Africa. The maize is taller, the water cleaner, and the schoolchildren better fed than almost anywhere else south of the ?Sahara. Just two years ago, Sauri was an ordinary Kenyan village where poverty, hunger, and illness were facts of everyday life. Now it is an experiment, a prototype Millennium Village. The idea is simple: Every year for five years, invest roughly $100 for each of the village’s 5,000 inhabitants, and see what ?...

Source

The Wilson Quarterly (link opens in a new window)

Treasure Hunt at the Bottom of the Pyramid

When leaders like YC Deveshwar, Subodh Bhargava and Arun Maira gather to discuss sustainability issues, they mean business. Brainstorming in Agra earlier this week, they not only discussed how sustainability challenges can be converted into business opportunities, but also unveiled their vision for the common good. The first ’Business Leaders Programme: Strategies and Leadership for Creating Sustainable Organisat-ions’, August 10-14, was attended by a host of business leaders,...

Source

The Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

SME Policy

The long awaited first-ever small and medium enterprises (SME) policy was finally launched by the government on 15th August, 2007. Speaking at a press conference, the Minister for Industries Production and Special Initiatives, Jahangir Khan Tareen, flanked by the Governor of State Bank and the Secretary for Industries, revealed its salient features, emphasising that the new policy aims to create globally competitive SMEs with a hassle-free business environment and to ensure provision of modern i...

Source

Business Recorder (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Narrow Ideology Keeps Taps Dry

A BILLION people lack clean water and 2,6-billion lack basic sanitation, but the obstacles they face usually have more to do with ideology than practicality, as we learn in Stockholm where nearly 2500 experts have gathered for World Water Week. Even though private water services deliver clean and safe water to millions around the world, many politicians and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) oppose profit being made from ?essential resources? such as water. Oxfam says: Rich country gover...

Source

Business Day (South Africa) (link opens in a new window)