On the topic of “in case you missed it”, Ethan Zuckerman of wonder-blog WorldChanging wrote a great piece on remittances back on January 12.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of remittance income to most African nations and many developing nations. Nworah cites a figure of $300 billion dollars sent from diasporas to developing nations via remittance. In Africa, the amount of money remitted by diaspora workers - $17 billion per year - is larger than the amount of foreign direct investment in Africa, and rivals official development assistance grants or loans ($25 billion per year)... While remittance income is incredibly important for the developing world, there are at least four major problems with the remittance system as it currently exists: cost, safety, potential for misuse, and scale issues.

The whole post is worth a read, especially the discussion of 4 major problems. Ethan also points readers to more resources on remittances, but I thought to remind folks of NextBillion’s Activity Database and topic category on remittances, as well as the recently-published case study on Thamel Dot Com, a fantastic goods remittance service. Still not satisfied? Browse the conference resources page for various presentations on the impact of remittances at the base of the pyramid. Happy reading, and thanks again, Ethan.

Antony Burgmans of Unilever gives an excellent speech on the role of private investment, businesses and governments towards meeting the MDGs. His beef: broad taxes ( a la French air passenger tax to alleviate African poverty) with little impact. His hopes: the current WTO Doha round will focus on BOP-oriented strategies.

"Let me make some remarks on the role of both business and government in this respect. I am convinced that both have a major role to play, both in their own right and through public-private partnerships, also including civil society such as Non- Governmental Organizations (NGO’s)."

"I’ll give you some examples from my own experience. Unilever – the company for which I have been working throughout my life – operates in most parts of the world, including Africa, where we employ some 50.000 people and as such are one of the largest employers on the continent. Unilever – with a long historic presence – has always attached great importance to further development of living standards in Africa, both from a business and humanitarian perspective, and has started activities in areas such as training and scholarships, partnership with UNICEF on fortified food, HIV/AIDS progammes and working with smallholders in tea to promote sustainable tea."