There’s Big Business in Toilets at the BoP
This is the story of a successful partnership between two organizations that share a passion for toilets: an NGO with 30+ years of making markets work for the poor and the largest toilet manufacturer in North America. Eventually, they made more impact together than either organization could make alone. Combining diverse expertise The idea of […]
Bill Gates Can’t Build a Toilet
IN addition to eradicating polio in India and starting the personal computer revolution, the Seattle Superman of our age has managed to make going to the bathroom a cause célèbre. Five years ago, if I’d told people I worked on toilets, they would have surely assumed I was a plumber. Now, they exclaim: “Oh! Isn’t […]
Carbon For Water
In the spring of 2011, Vestergaard embarked on a bold initiative to provide over 4 million people in Kenya’s Western Province with access to safe drinking water. Investing roughly 30 million dollars of our own funds, the company took a significant risk to prove that carbon finance could be a new way to unlock funding […]
Marketing WASH Products To The Base Of The Pyramid
Carole de Bazignan, Antenna Technologies, May 2014 As stated by Urs Heierli, economist and director of msd consulting (www.poverty.ch), reality is such that very few success stories have emerged so far and BOP marketing is a very demanding task: to design products and services that poor people can afford is not easy and to setup […]
Creating Access to Safe Drinking Water
Access to safe drinking water is a significant problem globally, with over 784 million people worldwide lacking access[1]. Waterborne disease is a leading cause of illness in developing countries, contributing to the death of approximately two million children every year. Sub Saharan Africa is the worst affected region, where 40% of the population is still […]
Easy Latrine Scale-up And The Power Of Markets
The Problem and Context iDE believes in the power of the market—the private sector—to improve lives and livelihoods. In the places that iDE works—rural areas of developing countries—the markets for many basic goods and services do not work; either they do not exist or they operate very ineffectively. Historically, the “civil society sector” – that […]
Maximising Impact through Co-Creation
Over 70% of Tanzania’s population, or 35 million people, lives in rural areas and faces daily problems, from water availability to lack of electricity, that could be alleviated with appropriate technology solutions; however, most technologies are designed and manufactured abroad and fail to truly address the needs of rural Tanzania for 3 main reasons: These […]
Delivering Cutting Edge Micro-Irrigation Technologies
I’m excited to share with you an inspiring private/ non-profit collaboration between Toro Irrigation, a US-based world leader in irrigation equipment design and manufacturing and International Development Enterprises, an international non-profit organisation with over 30 years of experience developing markets for agriculture products and services that benefit smallholder farmers. Through the partnership, an innovative drip […]
Improving Economic Conditions For Smallholder Farmers
Xylem’s Saajhi Stepping Pump was created to significantly enhance the daily operations of rural smallholder farmers across the globe. The Saajhi pump features self-priming diaphragm technology, small overall dimensions, a tilt and transport design, and simplified maintenance to ensure efficient use for all farmers. The design not only makes Saajhi easy to use but also […]
Alleviating Hunger And Poverty Through Irrigation
Benson Maira, a subsistence farmer in a remote area of Zambia, had little formal schooling let alone engineering training. By tinkering with scrap metal, he created an elaborate system to bring water to his house, earning him the nickname “MacGyver” in his village after the 1980’s fictional character famed for his ability to solve complex […]
Business Solutions to Empower Smallholder Farmers
Most smallholder farmers do not grow enough food to last the year. Once their food runs out, many farm families experience what is referred to as a “hunger season” – typically a six-month period of time of meal skipping and meal substitution. This plays a major role in child deaths: one in 10 children die […]
The Africa Fertilizer Gap
Africa has awoken. Ten of the world’s fastest growing economies are now in Africa, with around one third of our 54 countries seeing annual GDP growth of over 6%. However, this momentum has not yet spread to all sectors. Cereal crop yields in Africa are only one-third as high as in developing Asia, and only […]
How Financial Innovation In LatAm Is Securing Housing For The BOP
I’m intrigued by FOMEPADE, a rising star in Mexico’s financial scene. Conceived by microfinance veteran Juan José Gutiérrez Chapa (a founding partner of Banco Compartamos) to provide quality housing to underserved markets, FOMEPADE launched in 2012 a housing loan program that incorporates housing providers into a unique value chain for the families at the base […]
How Do You Sell KnowledgeTo Smallholder Farmers?
iDE has over 30 years of experience working with smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a result we know two things: If smallholders are to transition from subsistence farming to the production of high-value fruits and vegetables for the market they need access to low cost agricultural technologies, such as a drip […]
Fighting Malnutrition With Improved Complementary Foods For Infants
As of 2014, malnutrition remains a widespread issue across the globe. Families living at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) spend an average of 60% of their income on food, and yet, undernutrition still accounts for over 3m deaths per year among infants and young children. 26% of all under-five children are stunted, irremediably reducing […]
Leveraging Technology To Boost Agricultural Development
The share of agriculture and allied sectors in India’s GDP is 13.7% (2012-13); providing livelihood to nearly 600 million Indians. The decrease in the share of Agricultural and Allied Sectors in GDP of the country in comparison to other sectors is on account of structural changes due to a shift from a traditional agrarian economy […]
The Importance Of Design Aesthetics On Products Designed To Fight Poverty
Over recent years it has been recognised that business can help alleviate poverty, by providing income generating products and services to many living at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The advance of Design for the other 90% and other recent initiatives such as Human Centred Design and the recognition of Design Thinking have generated […]
Three Things You Don’t Know About Broadband
In the past year MIT and NASA have been working hard at setting up broadband connectivity in the moon. The results have been so positive, that you can actually have better connectivity in the moon that in many countries on earth, including the United States. At the same time Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, created […]
A Tale of Tradition, Technology & Tobacco
Ethnic communities living in remote areas are not only geographically isolated, they are technologically isolated too – that’s what I thought while going to the hilly part of Bangladesh lately. And I was wrong! I was visiting Bolipara – a remote place in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southern Bangladesh, a region famous for […]
A Tale of Tradition, Technology & Tobacco
Ethnic communities living in remote areas are not only geographically isolated, they are technologically isolated too – that’s what I thought while going to the hilly part of Bangladesh lately. And I was wrong! I was visiting Bolipara – a remote place in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southern Bangladesh, a region famous for […]