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WHEN the internet took off in the mid-1990s, it was often claimed that it would improve price transparency, cut out middlemen and make markets more efficient. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for this, just as there is for similar claims about mobile phones. Empirical data on the impact of these new technologies increasingly support the thesis.

Macroeconomic studies suggest that the internet and mobile phones boost growth. The effect is bigger in developing countries than developed ones, due to the paucity of existing communications infrastructure. The effect also seems to be bigger for the internet than for mobile phones. In a study published in 2009, Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang of the World Bank found that an increase of ten percentage points in mobile-phone adoption increased growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points in a developing country, and by 0.6 percentage points in a developed one. For dial-up internet access, the figures were 1.1 percentage points and 0.75 percentage points respectively; for broadband internet, 1.4 percentage points and 1.2 percentage points...

In a forthcoming paper*, Aparajita Goyal of the World Bank has carried out a corresponding study for the internet by examining how the gradual introduction of internet kiosks providing price information affected the market for soyabeans in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Farmers in the region sell their soyabeans to intermediaries in open auctions at government-regulated wholesale markets called mandis, a system that was set up in order to protect farmers from unscrupulous buyers. The intermediaries then sell on the produce to food-processing companies. The problem with this approach for the farmers is that the traders have a far better idea about the prices prevailing in different markets and being offered by processing companies. With only a few traders at each mandi, they can easily collude to ensure that they pay less than the fair market price; they can then boost their profits by selling on the beans at a higher price.

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IN THE old days, the job of eradicating disease fell to governments and inter-governmental bodies. Then charities, often led by celebrities or entrepreneurs, joined in. Finally, in the Western world at least, governments accepted the need to pool their efforts with those of private donors, big and small. The effort still seems unequal to the task. Every year, nearly 11m children die before the age of five because of a mixture of poor nutrition and preventable disease. Many of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (calling, for example, for a plunge in child and maternal mortality by 2015) look unattainable.

The good news is that more imaginative ways of raising and spending money are now on the horizon. How well they do will depend on many details-like the quality of information flowing between poor places and the governments, firms and individuals that want to help.

The change in funding is already dramatic. In 1990 more than two-thirds of the $5.6 billion spent on global health assistance came from governments (see chart 1). By 2007, when total funding for health reached nearly $22 billion, government spending still made up the lion's share. Look closer, though, and it emerges that the yeast which leavened this bread was "non-traditional" financing. In 2007 private money from firms and charities like the Gates Foundation eclipsed the total from all sources spent in 1990.

As a case of the new sort of money-raising, take UNITAID, an agency founded by France, Brazil and three other countries, which is hosted by the World Health Organisation in Geneva and calls itself a "facility" for the purchase of drugs to fight important diseases. UNITAID's main income comes from a charge on air tickets, levied by a dozen states; combined with cash contributions from other countries, this has raised $1.5 billion in the past four years.

This month, a private foundation linked to UNITAID will start raising money directly from the public. With help from most of the world's air-ticket issuers and internet-travel portals, passengers will be invited to give a couple of dollars, or so, to the fight against disease every time they book a flight online. UNITAID hopes that, within a few years, this plan will raise between $600m and $1 billion a year. If so, it will merit its name, MassiveGood

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Rural banks do the nation a great service that people in the cities seldom give a thought to. They serve a market segment big banks don't want to be bothered with. The money of the farmers, rural businesses and agricultural and fishery entrepreneurs that make up that market segment is too small-and therefore too expensive-for the large commercial banks to attend to.

Individually, rural businesses, farmers, piggery and poultry owners, and retail and service establishments in the countryside make smaller deposits and borrow smaller amounts than the commercial and universal banks' urban-based clients. The paper work, contact hours and account supervision that the farmer client and his transactions worth only a few thousand pesos require are about the same as those required for an urban client's multimillion-peso transactions.

Also, commercial banks are turned off by the risks they see in micro, small and medium enterprises' (MSMEs) so the loan applications by owners and managers of these businesses are most often turned down-especially if they have no collateral to back up the loan they seek.

A commercial bank branch in a really rural area often ends up catering only to the largest businesses and the wealthiest people. It is the rural bankers who serve-see, visit, talk to and deal with-the normal and ordinary rural residents and the micro, small and medium enterprises of the community to which they all belong.

Doing what they do, the rural banks have helped much to reduce poverty in the countryside. And they have made it possible for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to enjoy the use of modern things-like ATM cards.

There are more than 2,000 rural banks in the countryside. They service clients with loans as small as P2,000-which an entrepreneur needs to start up his micro-enterprise. Most rural bank clients are people who would otherwise have borrowed the funds they need from the usurious 5/6 lender.

Rural banks have served millions of small entrepreneurs all over the country-even in conflict-ridden areas.
With the rural bankers' help hundreds of thousands of micro-enterprise businessmen have been able to enlarge their businesses, employing more than their original crew of relatives.

Rural banks account for only about 3 percent of total Philippine bank deposits. Outside Metro Manila, however, rural banks account for 8 percent of the total deposits. In some provinces and regions, rural banks' share of deposits sometimes exceeds 20 percent.

Rural banks in 2008 had a loan portfolio of P8 billion for the micro-enterprise sector. In 2009, they released some P2.7 billion every month to micro entrepreneurs for their use as working capital. This represents more than 30 percent of the total number of micro entrepreneurs served nationwide and also accounts for 50 percent of the value of total loans to this micro-entrepreneurial sector.

Rural banks can do a lot more good if more capital were invested in them. But few of the banking industry's giants are putting some of their money in rural banking because of the low yields and what they see as the big risks.

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NEW DELHI: Consumer product makers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hindustan Unilever, Marico, Godrej and Dabur ar are rushing  
to the bottom-of-the-pyramid market with custom-made products six years after management guru CK Prahalad said consumers with incomes less than $2 a day can be a profitable segment for marketers. 

Estimated at close to 350 million, the bottom-of-pyramid (BOP) consumer segment is the biggest and perhaps the fastest growing in the country with about 40 million families making the jump from poverty to the BOP club every year. Marketers are no longer only betting on smaller packs of existing products to tap the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid; they are also looking to roll out products specially made for the poor. 

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH), foods company Nestle andbeverage maker Coca-Cola have already entered the market with products created for BOP consumers, while PepsiCo is set to follow suit. Others such as Hindustan Unilever, Marico, Godrej Consumer Products and Dabur too are learnt to be working on products for the BOP segment. 

GlaxoSmithKline is rolling out Asha - a milk food drink from Horlicks for rural consumers - in Andhra Pradesh; Nestle is promoting Maggi noodles at Rs 4 and Maggi seasoning at Rs 2 for low-income group consumers beginning with Mumbai's Dharavi slum; Coca-Cola has begun selling a powder-based beverage called Vitingo at Rs 2.50 per sachet across villages in Orissa; and PepsiCo's global chairman & CEO Indra Nooyi has announced that the company is working on a beverage or snack priced between Re 1 and Rs 5 for people ailing from malnutrition and deficiencies.

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Nearly a year after the war in Gaza, women in the West Bank are overcoming poverty by running their own co-operatives. With help and funding from several aid agencies, women have been able to set up their own small businesses providing training and marketing assistance to five cooperatives across the West Bank. 

The most recent wave of fighting in Gaza ended on 18 January last year but it speeded up the decline of already serious humanitarian conditions. Palestinians in Gaza are still suffering and Israel has kept up its blockade allowing in only the barest essentials. Unemployment is at more than 40% - more than 120,000 people have lost their jobs since the beginning of the blockade.  The economy is shrinking, and the chance to earn a decent living is simply not a realistic prospect for many. But on the outskirts of the city of Ramallah, Elham Sa’ah  runs a small supermarket. With a loan from the Economic and Social Development Centre of Palestine and New Farm Company, along with input from aid agency, Oxfam and the UK’s Department for International Development, the cooperative has grown and now has more than 20 women working for it. Most of the women work part-time to earn extra income for their family. Some of their goods have been exported as far as Saudi Arabia and are sold in 50 supermarkets across the West Bank.

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Even as Gerard Talbot-Paul, acting chairman, National Entrepreneurship Development Company (NEDCO), called for a smoother system to be put in place to foster the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), he said they have borrowed $225 million in the last seven years. He said since the inception of NEDCO’s loan programme in August 2002 to 2009, it has disbursed 9,647 loans totalling $225,168,009.

“NEDCO encourages small and micro entrepreneurs to start or expand small businesses that utilise indigenous resources and native talents and skills in non- traditional areas. “These small enterprises carry the potential to contribute to value added activities in the small and medium enterprise (SME) value chain, and have high export potential as branded Caribbean heritage products,” Talbot-Paul said. He was speaking at yesterday’s launch of Small Business Month (SBM).

Rennie Dumas, Minister of Labour and Small and Micro Enterprises, said Government is aware that small and micro enterprises are experiencing challenges in their operations. “This Government has always recognised the importance of the micro and small enterprises (MSE) sector in national economic development, and has pursued a number of previous initiatives aimed at developing entrepreneurship and MSEs in T&T. “We have always considered MSEs as a viable mechanism for promoting entrepreneurial culture a viable base for employment generation as well as a primary vehicle for poverty eradication,” Dumas said.

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KARACHI - The Sindh government has planned to set up Sindh Dairy and Meat Development Company and to initiate master plan study on livestock meat and dairy development under JICA grant during current fiscal year.

This was informed at Provincial Development Working Party meeting held under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Secretary Development Munawar Opal at his office the other day.

Secretary Livestock Laiq Ahmed Memon informed the meeting that USAID has showed keen interest in collaborating with the Sindh government for extending support to dairy and meat sector in Sindh, while a scheme for raising productivity and income of the farmers at the cost of Rs500 million will be started very soon.
He said that USAID was launching the Empower Pakistan Livestock Development Project (EPLDP) with $75 million investment under empower Pakistan agriculture programme (EPAG) which aimed to gear up a broad based effort to promote economic growth in order to alleviate poverty in rural areas of Pakistan. 

The project will work at villages, districts, provincial and national level, aiming to provide milk produce and dairy entrepreneurs with training, technical assistance and assess to credit, inputs and services especially to women, he said. "Women will be assisted to engage in a small business enterprise that will meet the growing demand for dairy related services and products," he added. Furthermore, an illustrative enterprise will include women owned milk collection and chilling centres to improve mild quality and increase access to market for raw milk. The Secretary Livestock also informed about the project for the master plan study on livestock, meat, dairy development in Sindh province with foreign funding of JICA to achieve a balanced development and poverty reduction through promotion of livestock, meat and dairy

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The village of Tmatboey in the northern plains of Cambodia seemed to have little going for it. It lacked clean water; there were no real roads. The people toiled mostly at subsistence farming, barely scraping by.

The villagers didn't realize they had a valuable asset -- hiding in plain sight, so to speak: a tourist attraction that a niche group of international travelers would happily pay to see, even if it meant a stay in basic accommodations.

And now they're making money for Tmatboey. In 2004, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which credits itself with having saved the American bison a century ago, set up the Tmatboey Ibis Ecotourism Project to lure bird-watchers. During the most recent peak season, November 2008 to May 2009, providing services to bird-watching visitors brought in more than $12,000 all told, a fortune by local standards. About 30% went into a community fund for improving basics like education and plumbing; today, life in Tmatboey has been significantly improved by new wells, water pumps, roads and a new school.It's a bird. Actually, two: the long-legged giant ibis and the white-shouldered ibis, both among the rarest in the world. In the eyes of hard-core bird-watchers, they carry near-mythical status.

In villages in many parts of Asia, nonprofit groups from around the world are putting into practice that time-worn proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Rather than donating clothes or books, handing out mosquito nets or building schools, they're bringing money-making enterprises to rural Asian communities. Some involve training in activities such as sewing and bamboo craft; many are tourist-related.

Among environmental groups, there has been a shift in the past decade or so toward "a more integrated view of conservation and development," says Graham Bullock, a former ecotourism coordinator for the Nature Conservancy's China program. For instance, says Tom Clements, a technical adviser to the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia program, the Tmatboey project works "by empowering local people to manage their own tourism enterprise, in a way that explicitly links revenue received to conservation outcomes."

The goals of each organization vary, of course, as do the circumstances of each village. "One size definitely does not fit all," says Mr. Bullock. But more organizations now seek "the participation and empowerment of local communities," he adds.

Below, a pair of projects aimed at helping villages help themselves

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Recently, I wrote a story about the Aspen Design Summit, a small event at which big name designers and philanthropists got together to talk about ways to apply the techniques of design thinking to social problems such as poverty, hunger or healthcare. As a part of my reporting, I spoke to Antony Bugg-Levine (left), managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, which in 2008 gave a $1.5 million grant to the Winterhouse Institute, the design group organizing the event.

Bugg-Levine leads the Accelerating Innovation for Developmentinitiative that Rockefeller launched in late 2007, and he had a lot to say about the world in which we live, about the place of design within innovation, and about the promise of private sector influence on the nonprofit world. His words didn’t fit into the final piece, but what he said has really resonated with me in the weeks since we published, so here (and after the jump) is an edited transcript of our conversation.

What’s Rockefeller’s interest in supporting design-driven innovation?
For us as a foundation it’s part of an evaluation of how to be an effective force in the 21st century. The complexity of the problems we address necessitate new approaches. Frankly the problems the world faces are accelerating faster than we can solve with traditional approaches. So we look for partners whose approach will allow us to harness creativity. Clearly the design community and people engaged in innovation have a lot to say.

What’s the focus and format of the Accelerating Innovation for Development initiative?

It's an initiative with two main components. One is a set of grants which seek to demonstrate that innovation processes can be applied to solve social problems. The second is to increase the application of those processes. So we're working with [innovation consultancies such as] IDEO, Innocentive and others to enable them to work on social problems so we can show this [concept] is powerful. Then we're looking to increase take-up in three areas: crowdsourcing; user-driven innovation and human-centered design. The Aspen conference fits into the human-centered design piece.

In Aspen, there was talk among the attendees of the challenges of for-profit consultancies working on philanthropic projects. There's a lot of enthusiasm for social initiatives, but a less than clear business model. What's the solution?
The business models of most design firms were built to serve commercial clients, so it's difficult for them to work on the issues of poor people who can’t afford to pay on any kind of scale. There’s no lack of enthusiasm and excitement for working in this area, but it’s forced to be occasional pro bono work rather than there being a systematic approach. Then you have top private sector firms interfacing with nonprofits or social enterprise firms and there’s a square peg in a round hole problem. We need to build a better way for them to interface. So our first meeting in June 2008 basically tackled the question of what it would take for companies to develop business models that wold allow them to apply skills and expertise to the problems of poor people more often, more effectively and more expansively. Aspen is a part of building a process to allow us to implement some of these ideas.

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