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How Africa’s top entrepreneurs can find the path to global markets
Swaziland alone has 70 000 such micro enterprises. Why is this the case? Money? That’s usually what an SME owner will say. Indeed, SMEs needs capital to start up and expand. In developed economies, most start-ups are self-financed with help from the four Fs: founders, family, friends and foolhardy strangers. In Africa this strategy is possible only for a lucky few. For unproven entrepreneurs, or those lacking adequate collateral, capital can be very hard to come by...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Book review: ?The Bottom Billion? by Paul Collier
I’ve got a hip-high pile of books by my bedside, including several manuscripts written by good friends. But after Paul Collier’s talk at TED , his book moved to the top of the pile, and I spent a rainy Saturday diving into his new book, The Bottom Billion. It was time well spent. Collier has dedicated the ...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Negocios en mercados pobres
Crear riqueza es mejor que repartir riqueza. Dan raz?n a este planteamiento un n?mero creciente de personas que, en distintas partes del mundo, se empe?an en aportar al desarrollo de los pa?ses menos favorecidos. La creencia tradicional es que los negocios se enfoquen en la parte de la poblaci?n con recursos. Seg?n el Banco Mundial, el sector privado descuida la oportunidad de negocios que representan los 4.000 millones de pobres que hay en el mundo, mercado que representa unos $5 ...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Mosquito Nets: Caught in a Tangle
By Eliza Barclay Jenifa John recently spent $1 on a billowy swath of gauze that could help keep her family alive. The 22-year-old mother of two in the village of Engutoto, Tanzania, bought a mosquito-repelling bed net that will keep parasite-bearing insects away from her young children while they sleep. It’s a matter of utmost concern: Before she bought the net, one of John’s children was hospitalized with malaria?and fortunately survived. All across Africa...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The fatal cost of illness in Africa
When friends carried Jennifer Uduma, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head, to a government hospital in Lagos, staff turned her away because she could not afford to pay. She ended up at the private R-Jolad clinic in the gritty Gbagada neighbourhood, where doctors removed the bullet without asking for cash up front. Two years later, she returned to give birth to a baby girl. R-Jolad saved my life, says Ms Uduma, a 24-year-old student, nursing her day-old d...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Fortuitous pairing has been life-transforming
The concept of microfinance - small loans to the entrepreneurial poor - is not a new one on US business school campuses. Indeed, as they expand their globally minded curricula, many business schools have devoted more time and money, and sometimes even entire courses, to the subject. Other schools have gone a step further: the UCLA Anderson School of Management in California helps young female entrepreneurs in Kenya transform their poverty-stricken lives by starting homegrown busine...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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They’re behind you
WE STARTED out abroad as ?accidental tourists?,? says Anand Mahindra, managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian maker of tractors and off-road vehicles. Owed money by a Greek manufacturing plant, it took an equity stake instead, and so Mahindra Hellenic was born in 1984. Mahindra & Mahindra is now one of 100 companies from the developing world that Boston Consulting Group (BCG) thinks have the clout and ambition to upset the world’s multinationals. The cons...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Acumen Fund Honored with Social Capitalist Award by Fast Company & Monitor Group
Acumen Fund , a leading catalyst for sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, announced today that it has been honored with the 2008 Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award . The award recognizes outstanding organizations whose social impact and organizational effectiveness make them unrivaled leaders of social entrepreneu...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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