Health Kiosks for Kenya Slums – Taking Community Healthcare to Scale
Access Afya is bringing a chain of “ultra-mini-clinics” to slums in Kenya. The mini-clinics are neighborhood kiosks staffed with qualified medical professionals and equipped with the latest health technologies and diagnostics. Access Afya’s pilot mini-clinic is designed to encourage patients to seek timely preventative care and early diagnosis of illness because the clinics are more […]
Rice production in Cambodia: the poor farmer’s perspective
Rice farming in Cambodia can be a tough and uncertain business. Rainfall is highly erratic, both drought and floods being regular occurrences, land is often infertile or under-nourished and investment in new farming systems and technology is minimal. Yet approximately 60% of the Cambodian population rely on agriculture (mainly rice production) for their livelihoods and […]
MeraDoctor: Reaching Rural Households with Trusted Health Advice
MeraDoctor is providing reliable health advice over the phone in rural India, where licensed doctors are scarce. It has been a life-saving health intervention for many patients who have found that treatments prescribed by unqualified health agents—called “quacks” in India—are ineffectual, or even harmful. For example, one customer, a 26-year-old woman who was eight months […]
The Hunger Alliance: Investing in Small-Scale Women Farmers
There’s already enough food in the world for everyone, but one person in eight goes hungry every night, and 2.3 million children die needlessly each year from malnutrition. What can be done about it? A report published by the Hunger Alliance suggests investing more in small-scale women farmers would be a good start. Three quarters […]
A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development
Last July, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, brought together a High-Level Panel to advise on the development framework that should replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. The group delivered its much-anticipated report at the end of last week, “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development”. One of […]
Business Incubation in Ghana
Mabel Simpson is the creative director of her own design house, mSimps. It’s a prestigious job for a young woman in Ghana. “At mSimps we make hand-made hand bags, clutch purses, men’s slippers, laptop sleeves,” she says proudly. “All mSimps bags are one-offs. Two people do not own the same bag. Our designs are inspired […]
Trending in Social Innovation: Questions for the Founder and Curator of the Social Innovation Summit
From a presentation of a prototype for the world’s first cardboard bicycle to a conversation with “Mr. Toilet,” this year’s Social Innovation Summit, held May 29 and 30 in New York City, spanned the gamut of inventiveness and cross-sectoral approaches to systemic societal challenges. For four years now, the summit (held annually in New York […]
A WaterFirst Health Model – Delivering Healthcare in Emerging Markets
HealthPoint Services’ “WaterFirst” sells inexpensive, clean water to prevent water-borne illnesses in remote communities in India. But villagers who visit HealthPoint units to buy water get a lot more: they can also purchase health commodities like sanitary pads, condoms, and nutritional supplements for pregnant women. Villagers can also access health services like vaccinations and diagnostic […]
Beyond income: Understanding the BoP from an access to development perspective
No matter how much practitioners agree on quantifying the Base Of the Pyramid (BOP) based on their access to development and basic needs, we still seem to be loosing the battle against income threshold fundamentalists. Beyond the traditional controversies calculating purchasing power parity (PPP) income measurements, due in part to the lack of comparable basket […]
Radically redefining the role of business in a post 2015 world – the need for symbiotic partnerships for development
Despite much talk about the importance of business in the post 2015 development framework, astonishingly little agreement seems to have been reached on the question of how, in practice, the private sector should be involved in the post 2015 development agenda. And unfortunately, the report of the High Level Panel, which came out last week, […]
GSK & Save the Children Partnership: From Ambition to Action
The High Level Panel on the post-2015 development framework submitted its report yesterday (Thursday 30 May), giving the first indications of the settlement that will replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire two years from now. The debate has featured discussions on everything from plankton abundance to WiFi access, but one issue that stands […]
Sustainable Food Production – A 21st Century Revolution
I grew up on a small farm, living on less than a dollar a day per person. I was lucky—we had a big garden, an orchard, raised some of our own meat, and hunted and fished for most of the rest. Years later, I worked with refugees and famine victims, seeing firsthand the impacts of […]
Gyapa Stoves project cuts a record amount of carbon and improves lives
This week, the Gyapa Stoves project, run by Relief International, announced it had cut a record amount of carbon emissions. ClimateCare has long advocated integrated Climate and Development projects like this, designed from the outset to protect the environment and improve people’s lives. Since 2007, nearly half a million Gyapa™ stoves have been sold, impacting […]
An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Food Production
TechnoServe As Eshetu Abote, a member of the Shegole coffee farming cooperative in western Ethiopia, crouches near his maize (corn) crop, the difference is apparent. The shorter plants – cultivated using traditional methods – barely reach his shoulder. The taller plants have benefited from training given during monthly sessions supported by TechnoServe’s team, which is […]
Unleashing Africa’s Lions
In Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat, he uses a proverb to describe today’s globalized economy: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle […]
Wheels for Fortune
It is difficult for people with disabilities to access mobility equipment in remote areas of Africa. Statistics from the UN Development Programme show that less than 1 percent of the need for wheelchairs in developing countries can be met by the limited local production, and those wheelchairs that are available are often unsuitable for the […]
Supporting South Africa’s entrepreneurs every step of the way
Lere Mgayiya founded Lere’s Shoe Shine Experience (http://www.shoeshine.co.za/) in 2003 to provide shoeshine services to passengers and staff at airports around South Africa. There was a glaring gap in the market for the traditional and enduringly popular service, but to spot it showed great entrepreneurial panache, panache and get-go that is unusual in a young […]
Business and the UN MDGs Post 2015 – Changing context: Business opportunity
In less than 1000 days, the world is due to keep true to its promise to the deliver the UN Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs), the framework that almost 200 governments signed up to in 2000 to address the most pressing issues of the world’s poorest by 2015. Much has been achieved but there is still […]
Defining a New Development Framework that Strengthens the Contribution of Business
Since 2000 and the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Sub-Saharan Africa’s citizens have experienced growing stability and security alongside a sustained and widespread economic transformation that has lifted millions out of poverty. Despite these advances, progress across a broad range of MDG indicators remains frustratingly slow and uneven. At a time when aid […]
The Multi-Stakeholder InitiativesMid-Life Crisis – time for a support group?
The sun is shining here in Sydney and a thousand attendees are gathered for the Global Conference of the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) – a multistakeholder effort bringing together stakeholders from government, civil society, oil, gas and mining companies and investors in support of transparency to help ensure citizens see the benefits from their […]