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 scans hundreds of news sources every day to create a custom newsfeed. When the mainstream media covers the development through enterprise space, you can expect to find it here
Cape-based technology incubation centre UUNet Bandwidth Barn is celebrating its fifth anniversary by boasting a success rate of 78%.
Since its creation in 2000, the Barn has become SA's most successful incubator for fledgling hi-tech companies, says GM Odette Potter.
The world's top electric appliances maker yesterday opened a regional office in Nairobi.
General Electric international president and CEO (chief executive officer), Nani Beccalli, said the company believes there will be a significant growth in demand for its products in East Africa's transport, energy and health industries over the next few years.
Just 25 km from Udaipur, the tourist town in Rajasthan famous for its luxurious Lake Palace hotel, lies the village of Chapra, a warren of earth huts and crumbling concrete shelters. This low-status tribal community is on the point of becoming integrated into India’s financial system through self-help groups that provide simple saving and lending services.
Radhi, whose husband owns the village mill and tea stall, maintains a neat ledger for one of the four self-help groups (SHGs) that have started to bring some rudimentary banking services to Chapra’s 1,500 inhabitants. Supervised by a local NGO, she and 15 women, by saving half a dollar each per month, have accumulated Rs5931 ($138) since September.
Novatium Solutions, a Chennai-based startup is building a $100 (Rs 4,300) computer using the "thin client" architecture. This, the company hopes, will take "computing to the next billion."
In Bangalore, Encore Software is engaged in a similar experiment. Its SofComp is being promoted as a sub-Rs 10,000 mobile computer. Earlier, the company had developed the handheld Simputer with the help of professors from the Indian Institute of Science in the city.
Unitus today announced a $1.1 million investment in microfinance institution (MFI) Grameen Koota (GK) in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The MFI partnership will help GK grow from serving 22,000 to 500,000 clients by 2009. Unitus will provide up to $1 million in catalytic debt and a $100,000 grant for investment in human resources development and implementation of improved management information systems.
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"Grameen Koota excels at the on-the-ground work of bringing life-changing microfinance services to India's poor," said Unitus President and CEO Geoff Davis. "By helping accelerate Grameen Koota's growth, together we'll reach 500,000 clients at a rate that defies industry norms."
The biggest challenge posed by these up-and-coming rivals will not be in Western markets, but within developing nations. That's the arena of fastest global growth -- and home to 80% of the world's 6 billion consumers, hundreds of millions of whom have moved into the middle class. Through long experience working in a Third World commercial environment, companies such as India's Bajaj Group (transportation), Egypt's Orascom Telecom, and Turkey's Sabanci Holdings (packaging, tires) will have an advantage in supplying goods and services that are cheaper, simpler to operate, and more effectively distributed than those of many Western rivals. And companies like Thailand's Cementhai Chemicals Co. will have close cultural ties in growing regional markets such as Southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent.
The rise of these new multinationals will force Corporate America to rethink strategies for Third World product development, marketing, and links with local companies. But growth of these new rivals should also compel Washington and other Western governments to revamp today's inadequate hodgepodge of global commerce rules. The reason: Western companies could be disadvantaged by having to adhere to more stringent economic and social standards than the competition, because of their tougher home-country laws and expectations.
Story found here.
Companies the world over face pressure to pump profits back into the community, but in South Africa -- blighted by AIDS and the legacy of apartheid -- doing good has become a crucial component of success.
Eleven years after the end of white rule, South Africa is battling the heaviest caseload of people with HIV, some of the world's biggest wealth disparities and a patchy education system that still fails most poor students.
A GSM handset that street vendors can use as a public payphone could create a million jobs in Africa over a 24-month period, says its creator.
The payphone developed by Cape Town-based SharedPhone International targets informal business owners such as taxi owners and hairdressers, who can then make the service available to anyone who cannot afford a handset or airtime.
The mobile phone has become the most essential work item for small businessman who, like so many others in the East African nation, makes a living from various different jobs at the same time.
Thanks to an explosion of growth in the mobile phone industry in Kenya over the past five years, handyman Alex Theuri says his plumbing-electrical business has grown by about 50 percent.
Call centres have sprung up all over Tanzania. Most people do not actually own phones, so this is how many people communicate.
It is a good business, and once again these phones are connected via GSM rather than landlines.
