The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania will convene a 1-day conference on November 11 in Philadelphia. Africa: Building New Partnerships, Impacting the Global Economy features panel sessions on a slew of NextBillion-related topics: consumer goods, private equity, information technology, housing markets, and more. Keynote speakers include Apex Capital’s Alan Patricof.

While I realize that this conference will be held on a Saturday, it only costs $50 to attend ($65 at the door) and it’s being held in the City of Brotherly Love. Talk about a perfect storm.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend myself. If you’re planning to be there, and would like to have your work featured on NextBillion.net, contact us about guest blogger opportunities. It worked well for Rhys; it can work for you too.

HT: Pablo H via IPEG

We’re happy to introduce Seema Patel, who has joined the NextBillion.net team as a part-time intern.  When she’s not working with us here at WRI, Seema is a senior project manager at ITF consulting.  She received her master’s degree in International Relations and Environmental Policy from Boston University and continued on there working as the assistant to the Director of the International Relations Program.  She also worked in Kenya, East Africa for the United Nations Environment Program in their Division of Environmental Policy Implementation focusing on environmental law and policy, environmental consulting, and writing and editing publications dealing with wildlife law enforcement, African constitutional agendas, and judicial publications.  

What role do information technologies play in economic development? We’ve been trying to answer that question ever since the Digital Dividends conference way back in 2002, first as an IT-focused research team and now as Development through Enterprise and NextBillion.net. There are no simple answers – which suggests to me that we should keep asking.

One group that does a lot of good asking is the RiOS Institute, whose upcoming e-conference and summit are worth checking out. The e-conference, co-organized with the World Bank Institute, is entitled "ICT for Economic Development: Exploring Possibilities for Multisector Technology Collaborations" and begins on October 23.

The Silicon Valley Challenge Summit will discuss the uses of information and communication technologies for global development and what steps Silicon Valley institutions have been and can continue to take to create sustainable development initiatives that address poverty. The summit is co-presented by the Center for Science, Technology and Society (CSTS) and will be held on November 16 at Santa Clara University.

The crop duster crashing and dumping pesticides into the Los Mochis water supply was bad enough. But when a warehouse blaze released toxic agrochemicals into the air, causing respiratory illnesses among farmers and their families in the area, Jorge Berni knew there had to be a better way.

Jorge had twenty years of experience as an organic farmer but in the wake of this series of ecological disasters, he decided to apply his chemical expertise and his principled stance on sustainable practices to form Berni Labs and create a pesticide alternative.