NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Africa Needs New Mkts To Replace Lost Textile Trade, by Elizabeth Price

Developing nations heavily dependent on textile production will need better access to markets in wealthy countries if they are to cope with China’s rising domination of world trade in clothing, African finance ministers said Sunday. Timothy Thahane, Lesotho’s finance minister, said his country is struggling to adjust to the removal of global textile quotas that limited exports from trade juggernauts China, Pakistan and India. Lesotho, and other smaller textile producers, must look ...

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The Wall Street Journal

Profits, With a Conscience

Making a difference and turning a profit don?t have to be mutually exclusive. Most of the world?s largest and most profitable companies are still trying to figure out how to make money by selling to the poor in fast-growing, low-income markets. David Green, an American social entrepreneur with no business background, wants to show them how it?s done. Mr. Green has spent more than 15 years making expensive medical products affordable to the world?s poorest people, and now he is o...

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Red Herring

Hale and healthy

A new way of developing drugs for neglected diseases of the poor world This week, scientists from the Institute for OneWorld Health, the first not-for-profit pharmaceutical company in America, presented the results of a large clinical trial at the Third World Congress on Leishmaniasis in Palermo, Italy. Leishmaniasis is a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of a sand fly. The trial shows that an antibiotic called paromomycin is effective for treating the most dangerous versi...

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The Economist

Mapping Reveals Earth’s Best Sites for Wind, Solar Power

Thousands of megawatts of new renewable energy potential in Africa, Asia, South and Central America have been discovered through the multi-million dollar project, called the Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA). First results from the project were released today at an international meeting of scientists and policymakers organized by UNEP, which is coordinating the renewable resource assessment on behalf of more than 25 insti...

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Environment News Service

Alternative Source of Investment in Africa: Can Ghana Benefit? by Charles Antwi

It is reported that a New York-based private investment banking firm is putting together a $1 billion hedge fund -yes, b as in billion. The fund intends to invest in projects in selected African countries. The banking firm, which has Ghanaian involvement, has developed a relationship with a major European bank to manage the hedge fund’s relationships with its clients in Africa. The firm’s use of sophisticated finance and investment tools-derivatives, arbitrage, leverage...

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Ghanaian Chronicle

Eradicating Poverty through Profit

World Resources Institute conference explores making business work for the poor, by Phil Storey Is there really a ?fortune at the bottom of the pyramid,? just waiting for corporations to claim it and empower the poor? Over two-and-a-half days in December, more than 1,000 people from five continents gathered at the Renaissance Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco to explore this question. The occasion was a conference organized by the World Resources Institute, called ?Er...

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Green@Work Magazine (link opens in a new window)

Global Experts Rank Top 10 Nanotechnology Applications to Aid Poor

According to a new study by the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health (CPGGH) at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics (JCB), a leading international medical ethics think-tank, several nanotechnology applications will help people in developing countries tackle their most urgent problems - extreme poverty and hunger, child mortality, environmental degradation and diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. The study is the...

Launch of Simu 4 U Takes Rural Telecom to New Level, by Elias Biryabaremas & Rosebell Kagumire

As the competition in the telecommunications sector gets tougher, the public payphone service, whose reform has been somewhat slow, has got new dynamism with the launching of Simu 4 U by Uganda Telecom Ltd. Particularly designed for low-income sections of the population, the service is notably expected to have a dramatic impact in rural areas where access to telephone has long been a dream luxury to many on account of cost and distance. The company’s Managing Director, Mr Aimabl...

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The Monitor (Kampala)