Georgetown University's Mortara Center for International Studies is hosting a book discussion next week on "The Bottom Billion- Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It."

The author of the book, Paul Collier will be at the discussion. Paul Collier is Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economics. He works on a wide range of macroeconomic, microeconomic and political economy topics concerned with Africa. Currently he is doing research on the causes and consequences of civil war, the effects of aid, and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural-resource-rich societies. He was the senior advisor to Tony Blair's Commission on Africa, and was a former Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank.

The event is next Wednesday September 26 from 12:00-2:00 pm at the Mortara Center (corner of 36th and N Streets) at Georgetown University. Lunch will be served and book signing to follow. Please RSVP.

Abigail and I will both be attending the discussion and we hope to see our NextBillion.net readers there!

The Oxford University 21st Century Challenge Competition is a new international entrepreneurship competition, jointly organized by the Oxford Science Enterprise Centre (OxSEC) and the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation (JMI) at the Said Business School, Oxford.

This new competition is open to entrepreneurs world wide, and is looking to encourage innovative new business ideas - from new products and services to innovative operational processes and business models that can help to solve some of the major social, environmental and health challenges of the 21^st century.

This year the competition has a total prize fund of £65,000, with £35,000 for the overall winner and three runners-up prizes of £10,000.

Entries can be from individuals, teams, new companies, existing companies creating spin-offs, students, scientists, academics and entrepreneurs. Entries must:

- Be innovative
- Be a for-profit venture
- Address a pressing 21st Century Challenge, within one of the tracks above
- Not have received more than £250K in funding to date
- Demonstrate a positive social and/or environmental impact as well as a financial return

Entries are welcome any time up to the deadline for submissions, 5pm (GMT) on Friday 12^th October 2007.  The finalists will be announced in early November, with the Final itself tasking place at Said Business School, Oxford, on Thursday 29^th November 2007.

For more information read here

Wrap-up from the IFC-CGAP-Visa conference: Next Generation - Access to Finance

 

“With our mobile commerce partnership in Japan, we’ve turned cell phones into wallets!” I paraphrase one of the morning presentations on the possibilities of mobile banking. “You can store money on your cellular device,” the speaker declared, “buy airline tickets, participate in loyalty programs, send remittances!

 

”The guy sitting next to me grinned and whispered “Well, don’t lose your cell phone.” Everyone in the immediate area chuckled audibly. The speaker, who I should stress was in the midst of delivering a strong and inspiring presentation, didn’t notice… or he did and courageously soldiered on. Either way that small aside kind of summed up some of my sentiments on the conference yesterday, a day marked by truly innovative thinking on how to creatively utilize available technology to bring the BoP into financial markets, but ideas that maybe needed to be brought out of the clouds and into the villages of India.

 

A key word that kept coming to mind for me was implementation. In fact, "Implementation, implementation and implementation" was a phrase the Director of Global Financial Markets at the IFC used in his lunchtime address, encouraging conference participants to strive for more than just great ideas in microfinance, but real practical ways to implement these ideas on the ground. Indeed, is this not why we had all gathered in the illustrious headquarters of the World Bank, we development professionals, business hot-shots and lowly junior staffers? Surely for something more than to mingle over gourmet brownies and cups of Splenda-heavy fair trade coffee?

 

The impression I came away with was: great progress, strong insights, but not enough practicality yet.


(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)