NextBillion - A WDI Publication

$2.5 Million Prize for Transforming Banking Sector in Haiti

SEATTLE and PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan. 10, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), announced today that Haitian mobile operator Digicel won a $2.5 million award from the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI). Digicel was recognized for being the first to launch a mobile money service in Haiti, Tcho Tcho Mobile, that meets the competition’s stringent criteria. This award,...

Source

PR Newswire (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor

The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium. Parts of Brazil look like southern California. Parts of it look like Haiti. Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world. Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic ineq...

Source

The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Fighting Poverty Can Save Energy, Nicaragua Project Shows

In two small villages on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, a project to improve electricity service had a remarkable side benefit-household energy use actually dropped nearly 30 percent. When efficient compact-fluorescent (CFL) lightbulbs were added to the mix, energy savings surpassed 40 percent. The effort cut costs and brought longer hours of daily electricity service to the people of ...

Source

National Geographic (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Brazil’s Cash Transfer Scheme Improving the Lives of the Poorest

Rumour has it that when senior civil servants at the Department for International Development (DfID) tried to interest the development secretary Andrew Mitchell in cash transfers, they couldn’t get anywhere. One morning he came across a column by my colleague Aditya Chakrabortty and was converted. Within a short space of time the "must rea...

Source

The Guardian (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

Brazil bank oversight under fire

Brazil’s central bank is being urged to strengthen its oversight of the banking sector after it alleged that Banco Panamericano, a medium-sized bank by assets, had concealed losses of about R$1bn (US$580m), apparently resulting from high rates of customer default at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Shares in Panamericano fell by 30 per cent on Wednesday after the bank’s difficulties became public and its management was replaced. But they rallied by 8 p...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

IGNIA Fund Invests MX$38.1 million in Barafon, a BoP Public Telecommunications Provider

MONTERREY, Mexico , Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- IGNIA Fund I, LP, the first impact investing fund in Latin America , announced today that it has invested MX$38.1 million ( US$3.1 million ) in Servicios Caseteros S.A.P.I. de C.V. ("Barafon"), a provider of public telephony and related services to low income populations in Mexico through a networ...

Region

Latin America

The New Normal: Haiti After the Earthquake

It’s amazing how quickly things can return to normal. You wouldn’t know it from watching CNN, but big segments of life in Haiti, including in the capital, Port au Prince, which suffered the greatest damage, have returned to what would have been considered normal in the days and months before the quake. There is plenty of destruction still evident, and tens or even hundreds of thousands of people living in tents or under blue plastic tarpaulins throu...

Source

Benzinga.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America

The Candy Bar at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Should Big Food Be Delivered to the Amazon?

Last week, Nestle, the world’s largest food company, launched a barge called Nestlé Até Você a Bordo - or Nestlé Takes You Onboard - on an 18-day voyage up the Amazon River in Brazil. This so-called floating supermarket will bring more than 300 well-known Nestlé brands, including Ninho (packaged milk), Maggi (soups and seasonings) and Nescafé (instant coffe...

Source

CSR Newswire (link opens in a new window)

Region

Latin America