NextBillion - A WDI Publication

The main obstacle to the eradication of malaria lies within Africa itself

Jon Snow Phil Davis runs the insecticide division of the Japanese pharmaceutical multinational Sumitomo. He saw our report from Namasagali and offered to provide nets. Journalists and pharmaceutical companies do not mix easily. Inevitably, motives are questioned, misgivings expressed. But a few days ago, I accompanied him back to Namasagali. Davis and Sumitomo are corporate members of the Global Fund, and are drivers in the new partnership to Roll Back Malaria.

Source

The Guardian (link opens in a new window)

Business skills solving social ills

By Guy Robarts ?? ? Kailash Satyarthi has saved tens of thousands of lives by staging dangerous and daring dawn raids on Indian factories where children are brutally enslaved.? His mission is to wipe away the blot of human slavery. In Kenya, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon have helped impoverished families by doubling the yield of local farmers through a low-cost, manual water pump. Meanwhile, a new bank is loaning billions of pounds to the poor thanks to ...

Source

BBC News (link opens in a new window)

Learning to Listen: Technology And Poor Communities

Bernadine Dias, a Sri Lankan-born scientist based at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), United States, admits she wears many hats. Her main focus is robotics, but she also devotes a lot of time promoting innovative ways of using technology in poor communities. In 2004, Dias founded an initiative called TechBridgeWorld to forge collaborations between CMU and developing communities around the world, including poor neighbourhoods in the United States. Dias believe...

Source

SciDev.Net (London), Waleed Al-Shobakky (link opens in a new window)

India’s mobile giants battle it out in the villages

Mobile phone companies are taking cheap handsets and life-time prepaid services to India’s hundreds of millions of low-income earners in a bid to expand market share and maintain their break-neck rates of growth. Mobile ownership surged in December -- with a record 4.5 million new users -- after carriers targeted India’s poorer citizens with the launch of services that guarantee a number for life for just over $20. In the past, a prepaid number would cease to exis...

Source

Reuters (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Over 14 lakh youths trained-Tk 641 cr loan provided for self-employment

?The Department of Youth Development (DYD) under the Ministry of Youth and Sports provided self- employment to 1,414,831 trained youths in the country up to October 2005, and 679,101 were given microcredit support of over Taka 641 crore (=6.41 billion Taka, or 96.5 million USD) , reports BSS. The self-employment fields include poultry, fisheries, livestock, goat rearing, food processing, carpentry, tree plantation, nursery, wool knitting, dress making, block a...

Source

Bangladesh Observer (link opens in a new window)

How start-ups are helping countries to catch up

Alejandro Pitashny raised more than a few eyebrows when he left a comfortable job at Deutsche Bank in London to return to his native Argentina to start a business during the worst moment of the country’s financial crisis. ? Four years later, the strategy appears to be paying off. Jos?, which Mr Pitashny created with two former school friends, exports luxury tea and herbal infusions to Britain, the US, continental Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Although sales were just $100,...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Business must take African stand

One of the UK’s leading businessmen says companies have a responsibility to actively support fresh efforts to improve the investment climate across the continent. However, Reuters chairman Niall FitzGerald said there was also a need to tackle the stigma of profiteering accusations which many successful companies in Africa now seemed to face. Mr FitzGerald, the former Unilever chairman, told a business audience in London that the case for business growth as the mai...

Source

BBC Online (link opens in a new window)

Enterprise Uganda to Become Autonomous

Ricks Kayizzi ENTERPRISE Uganda, a business development and advisory services provider, will turn into a legal entity, independent from the finance ministry, Charles Ocici, the body’s executive director, has said. We shall launch a national legal entity, defined by a wider array of business development solutions, reputable board, competent staff and a wider source of business partners and revenue sources, he said at their Lumumba Aven...

Source

New Vision (Kampala) (link opens in a new window)