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G.E. Becomes a General Store for Developing Countries, by Claudia H. Deutsch
For the first time, G.E. has rolled aircraft engines, rail products, water, energy, oil and gas equipment, and even some finance units, into one all-encompassing collection of businesses, aimed at helping developing countries come of age. One of the biggest reasons behind creating the infrastructure unit is to offer one-stop shopping to developing countries, Mr. Calhoun said. In fact, revving up sales in emerging countries has become the overarching goal behin...
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- The New York Times
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Technologies ’to aid the poor’, by Jo Twist
The best way to help developing nations is to recognise that development is of the people, by the people and for the people, says a Bangladeshi entrepreneur. Iqbal Quadir, Grameen Phone founder in Bangladesh, told experts gathered for TED Global in Oxford that aid strategies for the last 60 years had failed. Technologies such as mobiles empowered people because they connected them. This, he said, fuelled productivity much more than the top-down aid ...
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- BBC News
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Mutual Benefits of Profits from Poverty
Next time you take a taxi in Nairobi, you might not need cash to pay the fare. Instead, you?d text message the fare?s value in surplus mobile phone minutes to your cabbie using Safaricom?s pre-paid airtime cards. The model is similar to Smart Communications?, as first reported in a Digital Dividend What Works case study last summer. It targets low-income entrepren...
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- BBC News World Edition
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Global business finds out that new markets and responsibility go hand in hand in Africa
GIVEN the focus of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit of world leaders and the Africa Commission, it may come as no surprise that among the Business in the Community awards being handed out this year, a new accolade ? the Oracle International Award ? recognises efforts to promote development in Africa. ?The award will highlight company practice on the continent,? says Peter Davis, deputy CE of Business in the...
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Africa’s entrepreneurial vision, by Claire Bolderson
The clothes in Herbet Massissi’s shop in Kampala are made of brightly coloured fabrics turned into original designs by his wife Anne. Many who escaped wars in Uganda are now returning The material is all created on silk screens in the workshop at their home in the Ugandan capital where they employ 14 people. Mr Massissi is one of a growing number of Ugandans who have returned after spending years abroad avoiding the endless wars. Now ...
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- BBC News
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Keeping it local in Africa and Asia, by Ian Limbach
?We are helping to create a middle class in Afghanistan,? says Karim Khoja, chief executive of Roshan, the country?s second mobile phone provider. ?Our shareholders could have brought their own people here and sold the service themselves - they would have made more money. But we are here to create an Afghan business environment. So we hired locally and looked for small businessmen as partners,? he adds. Roshan, launched in 2003, employs nearly 500 staff, most of whom earn salaries sev...
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- Financial Times
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P2.8M-village coconut mill to alleviate poverty
Members of the Lawa Workers Multi-Purpose Cooperative established the first village-level coconut oil processing mill worth P2.870 million in Barangay Lawa, Don Marcelino, Davao del Sur to help alleviate poverty in the municipality. The cooperative built the Lawa Integrated Coconut Processing Plant with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program-Support for Agrarian Reform Development for Indigenous Community, Land Bank of the Philippines, and Department of Land Reform. ...
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- Sunstar
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Vodadukas to be powered by solar energy
In an empowerment initiative aimed at rural and other areas of Tanzania where electricity supplies are scarce or absent, Vodacom Tanzania has announced that they are rolling out Vodadukas powered completely by solar energy. ?In places where people like without infrastructure such as electricity and good roads, we believe these mobile solar-powered units will have considerable impact on the standard of living and help create jobs,? says Vodacom Tanzania?s Managing Director. Romeo Kumal...
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- Guardian
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