How do you determine a country’s commitment to international development?  I wouldn’t know where to start, but thankfully, researchers at the Washington, DC-based Center for Global Development have published an index to help us sort it out.  The Commitment to Development Index, published since 2003, ranks 21 OECD countries’ commitment level based on seven metrics: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.

The BOP Learning Lab, an on-the-ground research project run through Cornell’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, will soon have an Indian arm. NextBillion ally Reuben Abraham (photo) reports on his Zoo Station weblog:

I have a joint appointment with the Cornell Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. I am heading up the process to set up the Center in India as a joint partnership between Cornell and the ISB. Under the umbrella of the center, we are also setting up a Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab and a Sustainable Innovations Lab. The entire project is headed up Stuart Hart at Cornell, who co-authored the famous "Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid" paper with C.K. Prahalad.

If I’m not scouring obscure newspapers for BOP related stories, staring aimlessly off into space, clipping my toe nails, or thinking about integrating a word like phallogocentrism into a blog about microfinance, then chances are I’m adding new activities to Nextbillion’s activity database.  If you have not checked it out already, I would suggest that you click here and learn about some off the most innovative enterprises tapping into BOP markets around the world.  But if you’re like me and find it difficult to click on a link, then you can just continue reading this post, which describes some of the latest BOP enterprises doing work in Africa.