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Connectivity for the Bottom Billion: A Call for Collective Action
In the developed world, we take the universal availability of the Internet largely for granted. That connectivity in turn creates tremendous opportunities and benefits for individuals and businesses alike. What we often forget is that less than half of the world’s population has access to the Internet. Most of the 4 billion people who live in an unconnected world live in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. The problem is particularly acute for the billion people with the lowest incomes, who tend to live in rural areas of developing countries where there is little or no infrastructure to provide connectivity. This lack of access to connectivity leaves billions cut off from the Internet and thus the ability to use it to improve their lives and economic situations.
- Categories
- Technology
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How Kenyans Are Embracing Mobile Technology to Access Healthcare
It is estimated that more than half of Kenya’s population earning less than $2.50 (£1.73) per day has access to mobile phones. Kenya’s remarkable growth in mobile technology has led to a digital revolution that can address one of the country’s biggest development priorities – access to universal health coverage.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Want to Serve the World’s Poorest Citizens? Take Your Company Public in India
For the last 15 years or so, there has been lots of hype about “business models” that will alleviate global poverty while turning a profit. It was a premise derived from the success of the microfinance industry in providing credit to some of the poorest people in the world, who, contrary to conventional wisdom, had a higher repayment rate than the typical borrower. As the late Dr. CK Prahalad hypothesized in his landmark book, “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, there are several strategies that organizations fighting global poverty need to master – and that those capabilities are in abundance in the private sector. They are better at marketing. They are better at R&D and understanding price points. And they are good at partnerships when it serves their purposes. The public and non-profit sectors, alternatively, are generally not very good at any of these things.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Trending: Blending, The Fad for Mixing Public, Charitable and Private Money
MEETING the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals will require additional investments of $2.5 trillion a year in things like health care and education for the world’s poorest people, according to UNCTAD, a UN agency. A further $13.5 trillion is needed by 2030 to implement the Paris climate accord, according to the International Energy Agency, a watchdog group. It is enough to drive development types to drink—which may be how they came up with the term “blended finance”, a heady cocktail of public, private and charitable money.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Viewpoint: Business Fails the BOP
Businesses have made significant strides in the last 40 years, identifying innovations that make serving the world’s poorest profitable. Single-use packets developed by giants like Proctor and Gamble made fast-moving consumer goods affordable. Mobile technology leapfrogged conventional telecom in Africa, improving connectivity and reach. Capital inflows from micro-financing opened small business opportunities for billions. These innovations, and many others, have enabled multinational corporations to enter emerging economies and create profitable products and services at scale.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Viewpoint: Business Fails the BOP
Businesses have made significant strides in the last 40 years, identifying innovations that make serving the world’s poorest profitable. Although these innovations have unleashed markets, traditional for-profits have made two serious errors in serving the base of the pyramid (BOP).
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More Giant Rats On the Way. And That’s a Good Thing.
APOPO trains African giant pouched rats to sniff out tuberculosis (TB), a top infectious disease killer worldwide even though it’s curable and preventable. The program has proven successful in screening for TB in crowded prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique, and APOPO hopes to roll it out in at least six countries by 2020.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Glaxo promises to give world’s poorest access to its top treatments
Sir Andrew Witty, the outgoing chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, has unveiled plans to make the company’s latest drugs available to the world’s poorest people at a fraction of the commercial price.
- Categories
- Health Care
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