NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Research Body Develops Modern Solar Fruit Dryer

A new highly effective solar dryer for reducing the massive post-harvest losses of fresh produce has been adopted by farmers in Wakiso district. The dryer has been developed by Uganda Industrial Research Organisation with support from the German Technical Cooperation and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. Farmers in Wakiso are optimistic that their fruit production will increase after several years of making losses. Uganda grows a variety of crops ...

Source

New Vision (Kampala), Ronald Kalyango (link opens in a new window)

Experimental Entrepreneurship: Removing the ’Tin Cup Dependencies’

...the Botswana project illustrates a new concept they have developed in a study called Societal Wealth Creation via Experimental Entrepreneurship. The idea is to promote philanthropy which supports business entrepreneurship under a for-profit model that attacks social problems and creates new societal wealth. Based on four experimental entrepreneurial philanthropy programs that are already in progress, including the one in Botswana, the Snider Center hopes to attract phi...

Source

Knowledge @ Wharton (link opens in a new window)

It’s a Very Small World

Thirty-six people from all parts of the world, including Yoel Sharon, head of Israel’s Etgarim (?Challenge?), met at Davos under the auspices of the Schwab Foundation, to discuss social projects that may change the world, just a little. They all have the same aim: to bring about change through local activity. Zafar and the Kashf Foundation manage to contribute financing to large numbers of women, including loans and savings management. But for these services, the women would...

Source

Globes Online (link opens in a new window)

Hype And Hope: the Worrisome State of the Microcredit Movement

Is credit a human right? If these poor people could get small loans at manageable rates, they could break out of the cycle of poverty, or so the theory goes. John Kenneth Galbraith spoke to the point 30 years ago. ’The function of credit in a simple society is, in fact, remarkably egalitarian. It allows the man with energy and no money to participate in the economy more or less on a par with the man who has capital of his own. And the more casual the condition under which credit...

Source

The Public Agenda (Accra) (link opens in a new window)

Sustainable Farm Practices Improve Third World Food Production

Crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80 percent in four years, according to a study scheduled for publication in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology. The study, the largest of its kind to date -- 286 farm projects in 57 countries -- concludes that sustainable agriculture protects the environment in these countries while substantially improving the lives of farmers who adopt the res...

Source

Science Daily (link opens in a new window)

Celebs and business luminaries discuss social change at the WEF, which has a key theme of reaching p

While it’s all too easy to poke fun at the celeb-ness of Davos, Gere, Jolie, and Stone will be joining the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan professor of business administration, in serious discussions of how best to promote economic growth and development in Africa, South Asia, and other poor parts of the globe. I’ll be moderating two panels: How to Tap the Bottom of the Pyramid and Small Customers...

Source

Business Week (link opens in a new window)

Seminar in New Delhi discusses commercial engagement with world?s poorest.

FMS, Delhi, in association with Centre of Civil Society organizes a Seminar on Local Entrepreneurship and Global Markets: Corporate Outreach to the Street and Village Entrepreneurs Date: February 4, 2006 Time: 3.45 p.m. Venue: Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi Discussion Background The idea that commercial engagement with world?s poorest (the Bottom of the Pyramid, BOP) presents corporations the op...

Source

Cool Avenues (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

Far from being the enemy, the global private sector is the one certain way that poverty can be made

If business was mentioned at all during last year’s vocal Make Poverty History campaign, it was in criticism of the pernicious power of shady multinationals over the livelihoods of the poor. Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development, thinks it’s time to defend business against the fury of the anti-globalisers and recognise that without a thriving private sector no country can free itself from poverty. ’The poor are the private sector,’ he says, ...

Source

The Observer (link opens in a new window)