Results
News
By Charo Quesada The poor in Latin America and the Caribbean tend to live on the margins of the financial mainstream. Unfamiliar with and distrustful of commercial banks, they rely entirely on cash transactions and informal financial services such as those provided by loan sharks. Improving the situation of millions of families who cannot save money, obtain loans, increase their assets, mitigate risks or transfer resources securely is one of the central objectives of the I...
The roots of financial democracyNews
Excerpt: OVER the last dozen years, the view from Gemima Mukashyaka?s small coffee garden in the lush emerald-green hills of southwestern Rwanda has changed. In 1994, after the genocide that killed 800,000 people, it was a site of devastation, chaos and abandonment. Five years ago, when worldwide coffee prices spiraled downward, her neighbors in the densely populated region near Butare were uprooting their coffee trees and planting quick-growing food crops to survive. But today, there...
Coffee, and Hope, Grow in RwandaNews
Excerpt from Interview: Futhi Mtoba, Chairman of Deloitte Southern Africa, provides a look at where the corporate responsibility movement stands in South Africa, particularly as it relates to poverty alleviation. According to Mtoba, there is general understanding, and even genuine desire on the part of business to do something, but for various reasons implementation is lacking. One solution for increasing momentum, says Mtoba, is to develop better methods of...
More Action Needed By Business in South Africa On PovertyBlog Post
Readers of nextbillion may have noticed recently that the company profiles I’ve been blogging on every week have taken on a new theme. This is because the New Ventures program (also part of the World Resources Institute and a partner of nextbillion) decided to make these featured...
Announcing the Rising Ventures SeriesNews
Excerpt: Johannesburg - Electronics giant Philips said on Tuesday that it hoped to build a compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) assembly factory in the SADC region - the first of its kind in Africa. Millions of Southern Africans living in both rural and urban households do not have access to electricity, and those that do often struggle to afford quality lighting. Instead, they rely on hazardous paraffin, kerosene or candles which are not only major pollutants, but also often lead to...
Philips keen on SADC region factoryBlog Post
In Ecclesiastes, the son of David describes the resilience of earth and the futility of human action, explaining that, ?One generation goeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.? In the last two decades, ever since China began liberalizing its economy, a new...
In China, The Sun Also RisesNews
Excerpt: Markets can work for everyone but this requires an innovative approach that unleashes entrepreneurship at the local level, the WBCSD argued at a recent United Nations (UN) hearing. Many of our members are already promoting sustainable and inclusive business activities with partners from the development community and civil society, and we believe there is much more we can do. The objective of the UN General Assembly?s hearing was to create a space where...
Real business ventures are the only way to provide financially self-sustaining solutions to povertyBlog Post
In one of his most famous and eloquent passages, Karl Marx expresses awe at the transformative power of capitalism, writing that, ?All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned.?? In the last two decades, Wal-Mart, the embodiment of global capital, has almost single...
Banking on Wal-Mart
