NextBillion - A WDI Publication

The case for ICT-led development

Information technology (IT) is fundamental in driving productivity and economic growth. A McKinsey study found that IT-producing sectors of the US economy generated 36 per cent of its productivity growth in 1993-2000, in spite of accounting for just 8.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). A similar study, by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, recently found that 27 per cent of GDP growth in the Group of Seven (G-7) leading industrial...

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Financial Express (link opens in a new window)

Intel Corp. is pledging to invest $1 billion over five years to help provide broader access to technology and educational resources in developing countries. The big U.S. chip maker said the program, called World Ahead, combines projects the company has funded previously with new activities -- all aimed at giving people in developing countries more access to computers and the Internet. Intel’s announcement continues a string of initiatives from other large and small ...

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Wall Street Journal

?NEW DELHI: There is no fortune at the bottom of this heap. At a time when the markets are booming, rural India has been virtually barred from participating directly in futures trading. The reason: you need to open demat accounts which require PAN numbers. As farmers do not have PAN numbers and banks are strictly enforcing new rules, a large swathe of the population has been effectively shut out from trading both in equity and commodity markets. For farmers who had started to believ...

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Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Here?s a safe goal: saving the world. Bridging the digital divide is the best solution for many problems plaguing the developing world - healthcare, education, debilitating poverty - according to a group of 2,000 business and world leaders who met in Austin last week. But the question of which ways best connect the world?s poor was vigorously debated at the World Congress on Information Technology, which meets every two years to discuss how technology can address needs. Po...

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Star Telegram

Intel Shows Education Laptop

Intel CEO Paul Ottelini showed off low-cost notebook PCs the company has developed for educating students in emerging markets and said the company would provide training to 400,000 teachers in Mexico by 2010 as well as provide PCs to 300,000 teachers by the end of 2006.

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Red Herring (link opens in a new window)

Starbucks + Ahimsa = Aarthik Swaraj

SASWATI CHAKRAVARTY He has Starbucks in his eyes and ahimsa in his heart. Vikram Akula, the 37-year-old founder of SKS Microfinance, dreams of putting the two together to attain ?aarthik swaraj?. Akula, who finds a place in Time?s list of 100 ?People Who Shape Our World?, believes corporatising the NGO sector is a must for meaningful poverty alleviation programmes. ?A for-profit business model is the fastest way to put more money into more poor hands,? he says in ...

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The Economic Times (link opens in a new window)

Students’ work profits others

(Excerpt) For the group of students participating in the Students in Free Enterprise program at Roberts Wesleyan College, One drop can create many ripples is a slogan to live and work by. [...] One problem the SIFE team has tried to address is urban poverty. In one project, the SIFE team started five-day business camps for high school students from the inner city. The camps taught the attendees concepts of the acumen and ethics of running a ...

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Democrat & Chronicle (link opens in a new window)

The Business of Development: Innovation, Profits, and the Common Good

Hear the word poverty, and the image of a bright-eyed child with an extended hand staring at you from the TV screen appears in your mind. Put the word business next to it, and the mental screen turns off, failing under the pressure of the oxymoron. Business and poverty are almost mutually exclusive; the affluence and life force of one is incompatible with the misery and lifelessness of the other. Or is it? Over the last f...

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GreenBiz.com (link opens in a new window)