NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

How to release energies of the poor

For Richard Ndungu, the CEO at KPMG, when a company re-organises or repackages her products to facilitate access by the poor people, it is engaging in corporate social responsibility. Speaking at a SIFE Kenya CEO?s luncheon, Ndung?u pointed out that by unbundling a ?Bamba Fifty? Safaricom empowered millions of Kenyans who would otherwise have never used cell phone services. Equity Bank was also cited as another example of a fast growing bank in the East Afric...

Source

Business Daily Africa (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Scojo Foundation and Population Services International (PSI) have signed a five-year pan-Africa agreement to make reading glasses available to the millions of Africans who lack this simple, essential health product and tool for economic development. For most Africans living in poverty, reading glasses are unobtainable due to barriers of cost, access, and awareness. Without reading glasses, people who need to see up close to earn a living, such as weavers, farmers, electricians, and artisans, ...

Source

Scojo Foundation News

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

How big a change have cellphones made to Africa? I shout the question at Isis Nyong’o, over the throbbing bassline of a Kenyan ragga track. She tells me calmly: It’s had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership. I’d expected hype from a Kenyan-American executive at MTV Networks Africa but by now I believed the hype myself. It was not the bling, the fashion models with candy-floss hair - it was the Nairobi teenagers mobbing the entr...

Source

BBC (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Uganda: DFCU Boosts SMEs

DFCU Limited has received credit worth sh22b from the European Investment Bank to lend to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Announcing the deal, Moses Kibirige, the executive director, said the facility would serve SMEs interested in expanding and growing their businesses through leasing over the next one year. The funds will finance eligible SMEs in agro-business, fishing, mining, construction, tourism, transport, education and health care, Kibirige said.

Source

New Vision (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

India-China Emerge Strong Business Partners Of Africa: Study

Chinese and Indian firms are increasingly doing business in sub-Saharan Africa, and their interest in the continent extends well beyond a hunt for natural resources, Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Sunday quoting the study titled Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s new Economic Frontier as saying. These two emerging economic giants of Asia are at the centre of the explosion of African-Asian trade and investment, a striking hallmark of the new trend in...

Source

Bernama.com (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

A revolution in a laptop

In an article published on Sunday, Aljazeera discusses Negroponte and his project to produce a $100 laptop for the developing world. Excerpt: After an inauspicious birth 25 years ago when Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher were in their prime, the IBM 5150, retailing at $1,565, ushered in the age of the modern PC. A quarter of a century on the legacy of the PC is ubiquitous. Chances are one is at work in every facet of your daily life ? chances are, you are using one r...

Source

Aljazeera (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Small generator aims to empower Africans

Excerpt: Originally created to give an emergency kick-start to stalled boat engines, the sleek little South African-designed machine, pumped with one foot, can charge a cell phone battery in five minutes or a car battery in 30. The device’s creators, who plan to distribute it across swaths of Africa far from the power grid, hope it will energize economic development efforts as effectively as it does dead cell phones. Residents of Musheri Center, fit but fatigued from bicycling lon...

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria

Excerpt: With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminum smelter amid the cornfields here. What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill ? 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and hand...

Source

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

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa