The leading crowd-sourced microcredit platform, Kiva.org, has recently launched micro-lending in India. I am a big fan of Kiva and I am a personal lender on the platform having made more than 200 loans — see my Kiva lender page. But their micro-lending product for India is very different than what they offer for other countries.… Continue reading Kiva launches in India with poor product experience
Interesting personal experience article by Jitin Mitra on the status and impact of microfinance in India. As a result of the microfinance crisis in India, there has been a significant decline in the availability of microloans for poor Indian workers. While certain politicians gloat that they are protecting poor borrowers, Jitin notes that “the reality is… Continue reading Microfinance is more than a loan
Great article in Jakarta Globe on how a new mobile startup Ruma is helping to increase income for thousands of poor women in Indonesia through business transactions they are performing on their mobile (cell) phones. Ruma is creating a supplemental income opportunity for agents in rural districts of Indonesia using the mobile phone that they… Continue reading Increasing BOP income through mobile phones
Matt Bishop of The Economist recently interviewed prolific inventor and global poverty innovator Paul Polak about his views on how best to reduce poverty on a large scale for base-of-pyramid (BOP) populations (< $2/day PPP income). A few highlights on Paul’s comments from the below video interview: We will not make a meaningful impact on… Continue reading BOP-focused businesses need to reach 100 million customers
If you haven’t noticed ;-), there is a very healthy debate going on about whether our current approaches to international aid (and in particular, rich country government to poor country government block grants) is working or not to help these poorer countries grow their become less poor. This is actually a very timely topic. Why?… Continue reading Great review of Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid
Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty By: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo This is a continuation of my book review. See Part I of book review > Here are a few highlights I took away for the book: Most poor aren’t hungry. Despite what the experts say. Generally, the… Continue reading Book Review: Poor Economics – Part II
Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty By: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo This is one of the best books I’ve read on addressing global poverty. And I’ve read a LOT of books on this topic. It summarizes a massive amount of primary in-the-field research and has lots of interesting… Continue reading Book Review: Poor Economics
Interesting article posted by Forbes challenging the widespread use of the general term “entrepreneur” to describe both Bill Gates and a poor street fruit seller in a developing country. In reality, there are entrepreneurs by necessity (because you have to eat) and those by choice or opportunity. Forbes argues that we do a disservice to… Continue reading Entrepreneurs by Opportunity vs. Necessity
A new IDS report says that 72% of the world’s poorest 1 billion people live in (so-called) middle income countries … a huge change from 20 years ago when > 90% of the world’s poor lived in low-income countries. Low-income countries are defined by the World Bank’s definition of < $995 per person GDP (which… Continue reading Most of the poor live now in middle income countries
The Economist reported that when eight eminent economists were asked how they would spend $75 billion to most help the world, 5 of their top 10 recommendations involved nutrition including: Vitamins for children Adding zinc and iodine to salt Breeding micronutrients into crops Other recommendations included more girls’ schools and trade liberalization. Of the 40… Continue reading Micronutrients into the food supply
Defeat Poverty 