NextBillion - A WDI Publication

A home-grown solution to African hunger

Abraham McLaughlin DOWA, MALAWI ? Imagine a modern-day Eden - tended by a cheerful garden gnome - sprouting in the Sahara Desert. That’s the feeling you get, walking onto a 50-acre farm bursting with rows of healthy corn, thick sugar-cane stalks, and plump mangoes - all at the epicenter of Africa’s growing food crisis, with its 18 million hungry people. It’s tended by a sprightly grandfather named Glyvyns Chinkhuntha, a man with no formal agricultural training, but ...

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Christian Science Monitor (link opens in a new window)

Business & Economy: Competing in the Foreign Market

Filagot Sileshi Zewdu, having secured his patent right from the Science and Technology Commission four years ago, has now become one of the leading technology inventors in the industry and, in this regard, he has shown a tremendous improvement since then. The machines that he makes are different from those imported. According to Zewdu, electric baking with one oven consumes a power of 3kw compared to the imported ones of 5.7kw. Moreover, the electric baking machines which have tw...

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The Reporter (Ethiopia) (link opens in a new window)

IDB SUPPORTS PROJECT TO EXPAND ACCESS TO IRRIGATION FOR SMALL FARMERS IN GUATEMALA

Innovative financing mechanism with affiliate of international leader in corporate social responsibility. The Inter-American Development Bank will provide $910,000 for a project to expand access to irrigation for small farmers in Guatemala in a joint effort with AMANCO Tubosistemas, an affiliate of the Grupo Nueva business group, an international leader in corporate social responsibility. The project, which will be sponsored under the IDB?s Social Entrepreneurship P...

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IADB News (link opens in a new window)

Access to capital, business development and collective bargaining capacity are critical to rural liv

There is need for us as a nation to start paying a lot of direct attention to the crisis of rural poverty. As Archbishop James Spaita of Kasama Diocese has correctly observed, the economic situation in most of the rural areas of Zambia is very bad. And whatever the claims we may have today of economic progress or signs of recovery, there is nothing of this that can be seen in our rural areas. The situation in our rural areas has been one of continued deterioration. This may not seem ...

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The Lusaka Post (link opens in a new window)

AFP, 7 February 2006 - Beggars in impoverished Bangladesh are to receive interest-free loans from US banking giant Citigroup to help them become self-employed, the bank said in a statement Tuesday. The bank has donated 250,000 dollars to expand a four-year-old project run by micro-finance pioneer Grameen Bank. Grameen is credited with developing a unique microcredit system that has been used by some five million people in Bangladesh and replicated worldwide over the last 30 year...

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Agence France-Presse (AFP) (link opens in a new window)

Capturing the BRICS Markets

Aggregate spending power may be immense but the average Russian, Chinese, Brazilian or Indian consumer will hardly be flush with cash. The world?s biggest economies will no longer be the richest. Luxury goods companies will doubtless continue to find a ready market among brand-conscious elites. But companies hoping to capture the emerging mass market will need to develop products (and business models) tailored not only to local taste but also to local spending power... ...partnering ...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

GFUSA Designs ?Poverty Progress Index? to Measure Social Performance of MFIs

Innovative Tool to Determine Client Needs, Program Effectiveness, Factors to Overcome Poverty? Through the UN Millennium Development Goals, the global community has challenged itself to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. To adequately respond to the scale of global poverty, however, microfinance institutions (MFIs) must operate more efficiently, provide products and services that meet the changing needs of their communities, and show results.

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microfinance gateway (link opens in a new window)

Citigroup to give loans to Bangladeshi beggars

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) - Beggars in impoverished Bangladesh are to receive interest-free loans from US banking giant Citigroup to help them become self-employed, the bank said in a statement.? The bank has donated 250,000 dollars to expand a four-year-old project run by micro-finance pioneer Grameen Bank. Grameen is credited with developing a unique microcredit system that has been used by some five million people in Bangladesh and replicated worldwide over the last 30 years. Pr...

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Yahoo! News (link opens in a new window)