NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Expanded Markets and Products Mark New Face of Microfinance, ADB Annual Report Says

The microfinance industry is changing from a sector heavily dependent on external assistance to commercial operations run by some of the region’s most influential financial institutions, according to the Annual Report 2004 of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released today. Expanded product lines and broader markets are now hallmarks of the industry, the Report says, in a special theme chapter on Th...

Innovative Managed Care model to be launched on a pilot scale, by Falaknaaz Syed

A unique Managed care model comprising of a partnership between family doctors and the general population through Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) supported by general insurance companies will be launched on a pilot scale in Mumbai within the next three months. The proposed HMO under the aegis of Padmabhushan Dr RD Lele, eminent senior physician of Mumbai is being explored with the partnership of organisation group such as the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, a not-for-profit consumer body...

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Express Healthcare Management

Use ICTs to address rural poverty and unemployment: Indian minister, by Rahul Kumar

New Delhi: Major Indian companies have ventured into rural areas to tap villagers for their services and products through information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the Internet and portals. This potential of the use of ICTs for developing rural areas has also enthused the government as well as the World Bank, both of which plan to scale up their work in rural areas in India. At a seminar on ?Bridging the Digital Divide: Towards Developing CSR Strategy and Business Model...

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OneWorld South Asia

The Africa You Never See, by Carol Pineau

Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if it’s to have any chance of fully joining the global economy. Africa’s media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme,...

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The Washington Post

Africa?s billion-dollar GSM revolution

Africa is currently the world region with the highest level of mobile communications growth, and the occasional legal squabble notwithstanding, mobile operators are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into infrastructure and development. This is good news for Africa. According to a recent report, there is a clear link between the current exponential growth of telecommunications on the continent and the rates of economic growth in poor countries. In other words, countries with greater m...

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Business in Africa

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