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Developing Lands Hit Hardest by ’Brain Drain’
Poor countries across Africa, Central America and the Caribbean are losing sometimes staggering portions of their college-educated workers to wealthy democracies, according to a World Bank study released yesterday. The study’s findings document a troubling pattern of brain drain, the flight of skilled middle-class workers who could help lift their countries out of poverty, some analysts say. And while the exact effects are still little understood, there is a growing s...
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Nokia sees chance in underdeveloped areas
Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone supplier, sees China’s vast less-developed regions as a major driving force behind its future growth, a company executive said. David Ho, president of Nokia (China) Investment Co Ltd, said Nokia will make substantial efforts to introduce low-price mobile phones to China to tap the less-developed markets. Mobile phone subscriber growth in big cities is continuing to slow since market penetration is already h...
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I have often said that change in India is of the morphing, creeping kind, not of the mega-trend, discontinuity kind. One such creeping change is the increasing private sector partnerships with development sector organisations, to create win-win solutions to help alleviate the problems of the poor, in an affordable yet profitable way. However, the coming together of people from two worlds which are wired so differently has been fraught with problems, and that?s what this article is about ? what ...
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Advertising spending booms in emerging markets
Advertising spending is soaring in the developing world, suggesting that US-style consumerism is alive and well everywhere from Brazil and Russia to Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. In a report to be released today, ZenithOptimedia, a leading advertising buyer, says buoyant conditions in emerging markets have caused it to lift its forecast for global advertising spending growth to 5.2 per cent this year, up from the 4.7 per cent it estimated in June. Worldwide spending will ri...
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Investing for good has VC doing well, thanks
’Social investing’ is getting second looks. Priya Haji has a vision. And it’s big. At one level, she is building a bags-and-bangles business to compete in the $55 billion American gift market. On another, she sees a world where every consumer product is made by someone who is treated fairly. And she’s creating the technology to measure that. The serial entrepreneur and 2003 graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California...
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Entrepreneur for Social Change
In the summer of 1963, Bill Drayton witnessed the power of a simple idea to effect vast social change. A Gandhian named Vinoba Bhave was walking across India and persuading individuals and whole villages to legally gift their land to him. Bhave then redistributed the land more equitably to support untouchables and other landless people, thus breaking an endless cycle of poverty. Drayton, just 20 years old and...
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Mo Ibrahim: Revolutionising communications in Africa. His tool? The mobile phone
For a man who describes himself as a former Marxist, Mo Ibrahim has clearly made his peace with the forces of capitalism. The chairman of the fastest-growing mobile phone group in sub-Saharan African talks with relish of breaking down the Arab business world’s wariness towards his continent, of cellphones making the internet virtually redundant. Few inventions can boast as dramatic an impact on society as the mobile phone in Africa. Embraced there long before it became commonplac...
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Electronic Payments Gain Favour With Banks
By the end of this year, Kenya’s banks expect to issue nearly half a million new credit cards. Last year only seven banks were issuing the cards. Today they are more than 16. These developments in the private sector are mirrored in the public sphere. Earlier this year, the Central Bank of Kenya launched the Kenya Electronic Payment and Settlement System (KEPSS), which enables customers to pay and receive large payments on a real-time basis. In a society where ’cash is kin...
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