NextBillion brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
Our Staff Writers and Editors offer insights on the latest news, events, interviews and other happenings from the development through enterprise and base of the pyramid universes
June 13, 2008 — 10:16 pm
Many regular NextBillion.net visitors will have noticed that the News Section has been nearly monopolized of late by news about the takeover battle surrounding mobile operator MTN, followed by a lull in events. For those who have not had the time or patience to track this news, what follows is...
June 9, 2008 — 07:29 am
Most of NextBillion's visitors have heard about the current jump in food prices. These higher prices have already triggered responses locally in the form of riots in countries such as Haiti, Egypt and Bangladesh. The OECD and FAO have recently issued a report predicting that food prices...
May 28, 2008 — 08:30 am
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) have opened nominations for the 2008 World Business and Development Awards in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The awards...
May 20, 2008 — 02:04 pm
This weekend I had the chance to read CGAP’s new report about branchless banking. The report is a short summary about the current state of the branchless banking market. To those readers who do not know anything of the market it is an easy introduction. To those readers who have been...
May 13, 2008 — 12:25 pm
We live in a world obsessed with growth. According to the National Bureau of Economic of Research (NBER), there have been only four recessions in the US since 1980. Between March 1991 and March 2001, the US experienced the longest economic expansion in its history. It comes, therefore, as no...
April 7, 2008 — 09:01 am
Mark Pickens is a Microfinance Analyst with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global resource center for microfinance housed at the World Bank. We published the first part of the interview here on April 4th. CGAP are arguably the most authoritative source of information about...
April 4, 2008 — 11:07 am
Mark Pickens is a Microfinance Analyst with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global resource center for microfinance housed at the World Bank. We have quoted CGAP on NextBillion in several posts (see them here, here and here). They are arguably the most authoritative source ...
March 9, 2008 — 04:57 pm
By all measures, this has been a pretty long post to finalize. In January, Ana’s post about the mobile phone banking conference at Chemonics aroused a series of insightful comments. Al Hammond then weighed in with a post of his own (he also recently wrote about Biometric Security for Mobile...
March 2, 2008 — 09:05 am
As Robert Katz posted last week, a BoP Conference entitled “How to do Business at the BoP” was held on February the 27th in Madrid. The conference had pretty impressive speakers and visitors, since it was mainly directed at the corporate world. Robert was the first speaker of the day. He...
February 22, 2008 — 11:44 am
Which banking models could be used to enable access to the BoP? A recent BCG publication, entitled "A Roadmap for Expanding Financial Inclusion in India," tries to answer just that question for the Indian market. India has the second highest number of financially excluded households...
