NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Privatize Foreign Aid?

No subject has occupied more time at international conclaves than foreign aid. It’s been called North-South transfers, debt forgiveness and the .7% solution. Back in 2005, Tony Blair’s G-8 summit pledged $25 billion annually in new government assistance to Africa by 2010 on top of the $25 billion a year already in the pipeline. The G-8 is nowhere near meeting that commitment. So how about this alternative? Turn all foreign assistance over to the private sector. That’s alre...

Source

Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Moving in to New Markets

Business consultant CK Prahalad can see why big corporations are moving into low-income markets The world’s biggest corporations are scrambling to tap a market they have largely ignored for decades - the world’s four billion poor people. From South Africa to Brazil, companies like Danone and Unilever sell individual packets of yoghurt and soap in rural villages and urban open-air markets. In the telecommunications sector, the biggest growth area is among the poor, w...

Source

Irish Times via Evergreen (link opens in a new window)

Dial M for Money

IT HAS already changed most people’s lives, but there is more work ahead for the mobile phone. The trusty SIM card can also act as a debit and credit card. That means it may only be a matter of time before mobile phones are used to deposit, transfer and withdraw cash. In the developed world, one of the barriers hindering the switch to mobile cash has been the costly infrastructure developed by banks and credit-card companies. With cash machines and bank branches at every street co...

Source

The Economist (link opens in a new window)

In Poorer Nations, Cellphones Help Open Up Microfinancing

In many developing countries, where bank branches and A.T.M.?s are few or nonexistent in rural areas, cellphones may finally make financial services practical such places, fitting in the palm of one?s hand. Mobile devices have the potential to take financial markets outside urban areas, allowing banks to provide services like loans and savings accounts in rural regions, according to a report by Vodafone and Nokia, published last week. Microfinance institutions provide small...

Source

New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Aneel Karnani: A ’Poor’ Market

In PPP terms, the market at the bottom of the pyramid is $1.42 trillion, a far cry from the $13 trillion estimated by others. A movement that emphasises free markets to reduce poverty has grown strong in recent years, and has caught the attention of executives, academics and public officials. C K Prahalad argues in his popular book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, that selling to the poor people at the ’bottom of the pyramid’ (BOP) can simultaneously be profitable a...

Source

Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

Intel Inside the Third World

A marginal player in cellular markets, Intel must find a way to sell to the next billion, industry lingo for consumers in the developing world who don’t yet have easy access to the Internet. The education market?and products such as the Classmate?presents a major opportunity, says Martin Gilliland, Asia-Pacific research director for Gartner Inc. (IT ), because even if Intel’s margins on such devices are razor-thin, volumes could soar into the hundreds of millions. Intel could...

Source

BusinessWeek (link opens in a new window)

Ragpickers join India Inc value chain

It?s ragtime folks! India Inc. is poised to get ragpickers to strike fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Top companies like Tetra Pak, Dabur, Amul, Parle, Karnataka Dairy, among others, are wooing ragpickers to participate in their value chain. Though Tetra Pak is spearheading the movement of carton collection, companies are signing up thick and fast. In the normal run, paper mills cough up $75-110 per tonne for used Tetra Pak cartons. That works out to precisely Rs 4 a kilo. India...

Source

The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Microsoft Launches Educational PC In India

Microsoft has teamed up with Advanced Micro Devices and India?s Zenith Computers to launch a personal computer aimed at Indian students for 21,000 rupees ($513). The IQ PC will run on AMD Athlon processors and have education software from both Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - ...

Source

Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Region

Asia Pacific