As I waited for my bagel to toast yesterday, I noticed the latest Newsweek perched in the WRI magazine rack. Normally, I flip to the Perspectives page, then to the Last Word column, and I’m done. Not this time. The cover story, “The Giving Back Awards,” piqued my interest and won out, mostly because of this nagging question: how would Newsweek feature social entrepreneurs, if at all?

“Closing the digital divide” has become a mantra echoed throughout the development community. And for good reason; the most innovative technologies like solar panels, cell phones, and computers have been utilized by the BOP to generate greater income and economic opportunity. But as governments, businesses, and non-profits continue to emphasize the importance of new technologies, they must not forget that these technologies, when discarded, produce some of the most insidious waste. Therefore, developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy for dealing with e-waste is just as important as ensuring that the most sophisticated technologies are readily available in the developing world. That’s the message of Elizabeth Grossman’s smart new book, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, which warns that there is a “flip side to the digital revolution.” The negative effects of e-waste, she writes, "are now being felt by communities from the Arctic to Australia, with poorer countries and communities receiving a disproportionate share of the burden." (For a review of the book, check out the Treehugger Blog, and for an interview with the author, check out WorldChanging.)

Here’s the skinny on BOP news in the Blogosphere:

•Nicholas Deleon of Gizmodo.com writes about a $150 laptop that will soon be sold in rural China and South East Asia. Unlike Negroponte’s version, the personal computer discussed here will not have a hand crank but will be powered by a wire plugged into the wall.

•Pablo Halkyard of The World Bank’s Private Sector Development Blog seems to have been snooping around Columbia University’s Economics Department lately. In two posts this week, he mentions Joseph Stiglitz, who argues that natural gas nationalization in Bolivia may benefit the BOP, and Jefferey Sachs, who argues that the private sector—both business and NGOs—can help enfranchise the dispossessed.

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Organic aquaculture is admittedly not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of hot sectors, but the work being done by Primar is not about the latest IT trend or fashionable stock pick, it's about slowly but decisively attempting to change the way an industry functions.

Much like DryWash, another Brazilian company I highlighted last week, Primar is surrounded by competition that operates informally and without quality standards. The company has taken a leadership role in changing this trend in addition to being the first producer of organic shrimp. Primar faced making this shift or going out of business several years ago when the price for conventional shrimp dropped. Because of the company's small size, it was flexible enough to quickly make this transition and adapt to new market signals.

 

For someone like Marcia Regina da Cruz, a Brazilian janitor who earns just over $150 per month, grocery shopping is a painfully difficult task.  What this mother of three can buy to feed her children is almost always determined by the amount of spare change she can muster on a given day.  So when she bought three irons as presents for $32 she had done the impossible.  Thanks to a new set of policies at Brazil’s largest grocery and retail stores, Marcia and other low-income Brazilian consumers can now make purchases in monthly installments with almost no interest.  According to the New York Times, the new policies, which provide “low-cost credit for low cost-items,” are an attempt by retailers to “squeeze more spending from the big, but cash-short, bottom of the consumer base in Brazil, South America’s biggest economy.”

Thanks to President Bush, there is nothing more patriotic these days than looking for ways to end America’s oil addiction. So when I came across this article, Tapping the Latent Power in What's Left Around the Barnyard, while perusing the New York Times on the 4th of July, I knew I had done my civic duties. Of course, here at Nextbillion being patriotic is not enough; we must also be cosmopolitan. So once I washed down my hotdog with a Sam Adams, I got on the computer and did a little research. As it turns out, anaerobic digesters like the ones discussed in the New York Times are being used throughout the developing world. Perhaps the most intriguing case I read about was a prison in Rwanda, “which reduces cooking fuel bills by using methane gas from inmates' toilet waste.”

Mobile phones’ impact in Africa has been a hot topic of late, on NextBillion and around the blogosphere. The Washington Post recently got into the game with an excellent article, “In War-Torn Congo, Going Wireless to Reach Home,” that received front-page status in the well-read Sunday print edition (excerpts below). The folks at PSD Blog, meanwhile, alerted me to an online discussion starting today: How to Help Technology Help African Entrepreneurs? Check it out and post your comments.

Ah, wouldn’t it be nice to be Venezuelan?  Not only are Venezuelans governed by a coffee guzzling fiend who, at one point, drank twenty-six cups of espresso a day (now, he is down to only sixteen cups), but they also enjoy the lowest gasoline prices in the world.  At 12 cents per gallon, a price low enough to make everyday feel like Friday, gasoline in Caracas, Venezuela’s bustling beachfront capital, is actually cheaper than mineral water.  But don’t pack your bags just yet.  Roy Dibley, a mechanical engineer and social entrepreneur in Cape Town, South Africa, drives a 1980s Mercedes Benz, which is actually cheaper to fill up than any ride in Venezuela.  And if he gets his way, many more people in South Africa will be paying less at the pump than their Venezuelan counterparts.

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 handedly transformed the world’s retail industry, and with it, the American cityscape.  As Wal-Mart and other corporations embrace economies of scale, those Mom-and-Pop stores on Main Street have, in Marx’s words, melted into air.  Now, Wal-Mart is poised to make another large social transformation, this time threatening to "desecrate," what for many, is the sacred ground of financial services.  In an article published in last week’s Wall Street Journal, Can Wal-Mart Cash In on Financial Services? Robin Sidel and Ann Zimmerman describe Wal-Mart’s foray into the world of check cashing, bill payment, money orders, and—our very favorite—remittances.

In a New York Times article published in June, Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria, Sharon LaFraniere writes about the international mining company Billiton and its six year effort fighting malaria in Mozambique.  When more than one third of its staff fell ill with malaria and the mine’s operations came grinding to a halt, business executives realized that it was in their rational self-interest to put an end to the disease.  They teemed up with other businesses and three African governments and together, using better bed nets, pesticides, and drug treatment, they turned a malaria hot zone into an almost disease free environment.  Now, even after such success stories, inventors and health experts are looking for new tools to stamp out the disease.  One of the more interesting, and more controversial, tools is a malaria detecting wristwatch. 

On this blog, Casas Bahias, Brazil’s largest retailer, which has garnered its financial success by extending affordable credit to low income consumers, has been championed as a successful BOP business model. Strictly in terms of the bottom line, I agree. However, there is reason to believe that some of its business practices may actually harm the BOP. Case in point: Before this year’s World Cup, Casas Bahia made an offer that low-income consumers could not refuse: Buy one $3600 Philips plasma screen television and get a second one for just $.40. Of course there was one condition: Brazil must win the World Cup.

In this Sunday’s Business section of the New York Times, Daniel Gross from Slate Magazine writes about the latest trend in international development: the $2 a day job. He begins his article discussing A to Z Manufacturing, a mosquito bed-netting business from Tanzania that pays its 2,000 female employees $1.80 a day. (At Nextbillion, we have blogged about A to Z here and here.) Gross explains that many of the women who have low-paying jobs at this Tanzanian manufacturer earn almost twice as much as they did as street vendors and domestic employees.

By American standards, a $1.80 a day job would be outright exploitation. But in a country where 80% of the population earns less than $2 a day, A to Z’s wages actually place their workers in the top quartile of earners. In his article, Gross quotes the New York University economist Willliam Easterly, who explains somewhat rhetorically that, “To put it in the baldest possible terms, the more sweatshops the better. As you increase the number of factories demanding labor, wages will be driven up.”

You can check out Mark Thoma’s post at the Economist’s View for commentary on Gross's article.  The Acumen Fund, which has invested in A to Z, also has a blog worth checking out.

 

Mike Jarvis writes in PSD Blog today about the increasing demand for Fairtrade products as a sign of growing consumer trust in the quality and desirability of this relatively new business model. This is news that will not only give Coldplay's Chris Martin something to talk about in between writing songs informing us that the stars are, in fact, Yellow.... it will keep one Brazilian company ahead of the fashion curve.

AmazonLife sells material for bags and clothing that is made using Treetap, the company's name for a rubber they harvest from trees native to northern Brazil. Eco-friendly products are already gaining wide popularity with entrepreneurs like Josh Dorfman of Vivavi.com selling eco-chic home decor to Manhattan's elite. But AmazonLife takes it to the next level, providing high paying jobs to local farmers while ensuring that their products are sustainably produced. The company follows fairtrade policy by creating an equitable relationship with their rural suppliers and paying them a living wage. Their success shatters old myths that incorporating social and environmental goals into an enterprise's business plan will distract it from making solid profits - AmazonLife's products are already being used by some of Europe's major designers. I won't try to name any here, because I don't want to pretend I know anything about fashion- in fact I'm pretty sure I'm wearing mismatching socks as I write this. But when they say they supply to some of the industry players, I'll take their word for it. See for yourself, here.

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 generation of tech-savvy consumers has emerged, replacing the aging generation scarred by the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.  But as one generation replaces another here, it seems that the earth will not abideth for ever.  The air in China’s mushrooming cities, which are powered by coal-burning power plants, is so polluted that, on certain days, residents are advised to stay indoors lest they suffer severe health complications.  Now, according to the New Scientist, air pollution has become so bad that it is actually preventing condensation and exacerbating China’s current draught.  Realizing that its environmental situation is untenable, the Chinese government announced this January that it will end its addiction to coal—China burns more coal than the US, India, and Russia combined—by spending a whopping $200 billion on renewable energy sources over the next 15 years.  Such vast sums of money have captured the attention of industry giants, which are now scrambling to get a piece of the action.

Lost in the ongoing debate about low-cost computers and the digital divide is Argentina’s MiPC (My First Personal Computer) program. Global Voices’ David Sasaki nicely summarizes the ongoing debate over MiPC’s technology options (Intel and Microsoft exclusivity vs. AMD and Linux inclusion) and whether or not it’s succeeded from a business and development point of view: