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By JOSHUA BENTON / The Dallas Morning News

Gerald Heeger is a newcomer to Texas, but he isn't afraid to set Texas-size goals.

In five years, he wants his company, Whitney International University, to enroll more than half a million students around the world and be on its way to becoming the biggest provider of higher education the Earth has ever seen.

"How's that for audacity?" Dr. Heeger said in his downtown Dallas office. "I believe there's a big problem in the world, and big problems need big solutions."

The big problem is that billions of people in developing countries can't afford higher education. Whitney plans to offer it on the cheap – at one-quarter the price of competitors – by relying heavily on standardized lessons and the Internet.

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Joseph Hanania, Managing Director, HP Middle-East, participated at the recently concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Middle-East.

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This isn't just a job for governments and aid agencies, he said. Private companies have a role to play too but a public/private balance will have to be found between the kind of basic infrastructure work that will never return a profit and those that will.

World Bank Group head Paul Wolfowitz Monday called for increased investment and involvement in development projects targeting poverty particularly in Africa.

"Africa's infrastructure may have been adequate in the 1960s and 1970s but high population growth combined with rapid urbanization has lead to a severe mismatch between the need for infrastructure and what's available," said Wolfowitz speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. He is in Tokyo to attend a two-day World Bank conference on development economics.

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ACCRA, Ghana - The sparkling new bank, down the street from Accra's bustling Makola market, looks like a financial institution anywhere: six busy teller windows, a new accounts desk, air conditioning holding the steamy heat outside at bay.

But for Ghanaians who have never had access to banking services before, it represents a revolution. After years of seeking small loans from loan sharks, family members and nonprofit microcredit programs, they now have what they never had before: a full-service commercial bank for the poor.

Borrowers -- primarily women -- can now seek loans for as little as $100 and open savings accounts with even smaller amounts of cash.

Microcredit programs, which offer poor borrowers small loans at low interest rates, have been achieving successes for decades now in countries throughout the world, including Ghana. But the World Bank estimates that only 2 percent of the world's poor have access to formal banks that offer a range of financial services.

In Africa, where many people live in rural areas and relatively few have enough savings or income to open an account, the lack of access to financial services is particularly acute.

Chicago-based Opportunity International, one of the world's largest microfinance organizations, is trying to change that by building a network of for-profit commercial banks for the poor in countries from Zambia to Ethiopia.

In Ghana, an initial three branch banks have attracted $2.1 million in deposits and established a $6 million loan portfolio in their first 18 months, said Benjie Montemayor, who heads Opportunity International's network of commercial banks in Ghana.

Ghana's legions of small traders are some of the bank's biggest customers. By banding together to co-sign on loans for each other, they can get credit without collateral.

Rebecca Anderson, 52, an auto spare parts dealer, said she had used her loans to amass a $5,500 stock of spare parts and now made enough profit to put her oldest daughter through medical school.

Montemayor said customers increasingly aspire not just to escape poverty but to become rich.

"We want to see them moving and crossing that poverty line," he said. "We want to see some millionaires eventually."

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GENEVA , May 29 (IPS) - The World Health Assembly concluded its annual session over the weekend with the adoption of a resolution that could change the concept of drug R&D, and open the door to a system that gives the world's poor greater access to medicines.

The resolution approved by the Assembly, the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), urges the 192 member states to make the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals a strategic sector, thus committing themselves to making R&D of medicines consistent with public interest needs a priority.

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To Martin Fisher, 48, and Nick Moon, 51, a simple pump could be the solution to poverty for millions of Africans. They're the co-founders of KickStart, a San Francisco--based nonprofit that encourages rural entrepreneurship by providing tools that Africa's poor can afford. Since the group was founded in Nairobi in 1991 under the name ApproTEC, it has developed a machine to make building blocks, a press that extracts cooking oil from seeds, a hay baler and a series of hand-operated micro-irrigation pumps. Their latest, the MoneyMaker Hip Pump, retails in Africa for $34.

For someone like Felix Mururi, a Kenyan in his early 30s, the hip pump made small-scale farming more profitable than working in a city. Recovering his investment within three months (the goal for every KickStart product), he felt confident enough to rent more land. But Fisher and Moon are doing more than selling a pump. They're trying to market a new model of development. Their aim, says Fisher, is "to create dignity rather than dependency and to leave in place a sustainable and dynamic private sector."

Moon says KickStart operates on a simple maxim: "The greatest good to the largest number in the shortest time at the least cost." It seems to be working. The company has sold 63,000 pumps in Kenya, Tanzania and Mali and estimates that $45 million in profits and wages has been generated by new, "kick-started" businesses.

Over the next three years, KickStart plans to expand into three more countries, sell 125,000 more pumps, roll out a "deep-lift irrigation pump" that can pull water from 60 ft. underground and bring 400,000 more people out of poverty.

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by Bill Baue

Microfinance, which provides tiny loans to help people bootstrap out of poverty by running small (often one-person) businesses, took another step toward becoming a distinct asset class with the advent of a mechanism for objectively rating microfinance funds. MicroRate, an independent company that already rates microfinance institutions (MFIs), has been working to develop a microfinance fund-rating tool for several years. At a May 1 Silicon Valley Microfinance Network (SVMN) talk, Bob Patillo of the Gray Ghost Microfinance Fund (a $75 million microfinance "fund of funds") announced a project to support the MicroRate rating tool that is also backed by the Omidyar Network and the Gates Foundation.

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Bangladesh's banking sector has been going through massive development due to favourable policy of the government. They already have a significant number of private sector banks and these banks now offer short to long term packages for their respective clients. For their successful performance, not necessarily only the businessmen but also housewives and potential entrepreneurs nowadays have access to banking services.

There are many women who have got success in small business and do feel the financial need to graduate themselves with better ventures. But these women are not always able to meet the banks' official requirements.

A few banks have already extended support and provided collateral-free loan of a limited amount. But this category loans, however, have created further needs to help them in utilising their potential to the maximum. It is learnt that some entrepreneurs who have been enjoying the short-term loans now feel the need for bigger loans from their banks. But the bank authorities could not extend such loans or increase their amount due to the legal limitations enforced by the central bank.

The Financial Express believes that due to successful efforts in micro-credit, there is a good number of small and mid level entrepreneurs including women who will be the major clients of many banks in coming days. So banks should concentrate on introducing SME-friendly or women-friendly banking schemes by changing the existing rules and regulations.

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Kenya's small and medium-sized businesses can tap into a Sh1.7 billion regional fund launched by a group of local and international companies.It will be made available in loans and business development assistance through managerial training.Dubbed 'Aspire Kenya', the initiative has been jointly established by GroFin, an African specialist business developer and financier, and Shell Foundation. Small Ugandan and Tanzanian firms will also benefit.

GroFin will co-ordinate the disbursement of the money and manage the fund.
"The main aim is to "build better businesses" a cross the SME sector. It is already open for business and actively looking for SMEs that require both business development assistance and finance," said Kenneth Onyando, GroFin's Kenya country director.

The model is designed to replicate a similar one run in South Africa by the two companies, which the group says is a success.

The concept is meant to finance SMEs by making loans available without necessarily demanding a collateral in the range of from Sh3.6 million to Sh71 million. The Kenyan chapter is co-financed by Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), which has put in Sh426 million.

Other investors in strategic partnership include the Netherlands Development Company (FMO), an international development bank which invests in risk capital in companies and financial institutions in developing countries.

Also involved are CDC of Britain, Triodos Renewable Energy Development Fund and BIO, a Belgium government development financial institution.

The group target SMEs in all sectors but has a 40 per cent focus on SMEs in the energy sector and 10 per cent in those involved in clean energy activities.

In advancing loan the group will provide managerial skills by seconding their trained personnel to inject managerial skills into business, thus taking care of their finances.

Said Mr Onyando: "SMEs lack the business skills, track record and/or collateral to meet the existing lending criteria of local banks. By delivering a combination of business development assistance and finance, Aspire Kenya can overcome those problem."

The loans will be channelled through the Commercial Bank of Africa at the prevailing market interest rate, but with repayment pegged on performance.

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