NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Poor countries are ’not mining their green gold’, by Mike Shanahan

In theory, screening biological resources for marketable products ? a process known as ’bioprospecting’ ? could contribute to sustainable development. Attracted by the prospect of new drugs, foreign pharmaceutical companies would screen biological resources (such as plants and corals) from a developing nation. When a successful drug comes out of their research, the company would share the profits with the country that the resource was taken from. Agreements would ensure that benefi...

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SciDev.Net

The Chinese Menu (for Development), by Douglass C. North

First, there are many paths to development. The key is creating an institutional structure derived from your particular cultural institutions that provide the proper incentives -- not slavishly imitating Western institutions. Second, the world is constantly changing in fundamental ways. The basics of economic theory are essential elements of every economy, but the problems countries face today are set in new and novel frameworks of beliefs, institutions, technologies, and radically lower inform...

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The Wall Street Journal

ABP starts investing in Third World micro credits, by Leen Preesman

ABP has said it has started investing in micro credits for small entrepreneurs in the Third World. During the first quarter of 2005 ABP has invested ?5m in an unnamed fund for micro credits. This means more than 14,000 small enterprises are being supported by an average loan of ?350, aimed at providing help to an escape from poverty. ABP said it has chosen for this kind of investment, because ?it offers perspectives of reasonable returns and limited risks. Moreover micro credits will ...

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IPE.com

Mobile phones ring changes for world’s poor, by Shafiq Alam

With just four calls from a mobile phone, remote Bangladeshi farmer Mir Jahid Hussein can now ensure he gets the best price for his seasonal jute seeds -- something he could once only dream of. As it is for tens of millions of poor rural-dwellers in developing countries from Bangladesh to Botswana, mobile phone technology is revolutionising Hussein’s life for the better, enabling him to cut out cheating middlemen and deal directly with buyers from district markets. What 10 years a...

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Sify

India, Nepad in Talks Over Satellite Network, by Jonathan Katzenellenbogen

The proposed Indian network will primarily provide internet, tele- education, tele-medicine, videoconferencing and voice-over internet protocol services. It will also support government e-governance projects, as well as entertainment, resource mapping and meteorological services. Such systems have considerable potential to deliver education and heath care to rural and resource-poor areas with the advantage of offering large cost and time savings. Nearly four years after its launch, ...

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Business Day (Johannesburg)

Millennium Challenge Corporation Signs Compact with Madagascar

Today, the United States , through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, signed a four-year Compact with the Government of the Republic of Madagascar worth close to $110 million. This first Millennium Challenge Compact will reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth in Madagascar by focusing in three areas: property rights, the financial sector, and agricultural business investment. Press release ...

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Millennium Challenge Corporation

CIDA announces new development partners:

Developing countries where Canada can make a difference CIDA will target its efforts in the following sectors: governance, health (with a focus on HIV/AIDS), basic education, private-sector development, and environmental sustainability, with gender equality as a cross-cutting theme that is systematically and explicitly integrated across all programming. These sectors are all fundamental to human well-being and crucial to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, internatio...

New Partnership Will Support Newspapers in Developing Countries

The World Association of Newspapers and the Media Development Loan Fund are teaming up to invest major funds in newspaper projects in developing countries. WAN, the global association of the world’s press, and MDLF, a non-profitorganization providing low cost financing to news businesses in developing countries, are creating a partnership to provide low-interest loans to help carefully selected independent media companies in developing democracies to become financially viable bus...

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editorsweblog.org