PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

If you like the Aceh Diary...

Click over to NextBillion for the Zambia Journal. Like our own Alex Burger, FINCA's Brian McBrearity is supporting the development of small businesses in Africa. He's just posted a second story - this one about the mystery of Ndola. Why do none of the businesses in this Zambian town source locally? Brian's stumped. Hopefully as he goes along he'll provide more insight with the descriptions.

While you're there, read about how Pakistan is inching toward mobile banking.

A Stern warning on climate change

The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed - the poorest countries and people will suffer earliest and most. And if and when the damages appear it will be too late to reverse the process. Thus we are forced to look a long way ahead.

From the executive summary (PDF) of the Economics of Climate Change report from former World Bank Chief Economist Sir Nicholas Stern to Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK government. The report is being covered by all the major news websites, but I liked the coverage on BBC News, which includes downloads and quotes from this morning's round of press conferences. 

Microcredit translation project

Ashoka just launched an ambitious subtitling project with dotSUB, a new site that lets you translate films line by line. The plan: volunteers translate three video profiles of Muhammad Yunus into 100 languages in time for the Nobel ceremony in December. Go on, translate a few lines...

Be good to all the losers

Globalization, or trade liberalization more specifically, walks a fine line between improving our overall quality of life and costing large groups of people their jobs. Just ask the automakers in Detroit. We know that people who lose their jobs to trade pay a higher economic penalty than those who lose them for non-trade reasons. A new OECD Observer article makes an excellent case for a compensation/adjustment program that doesn't distinguish between the two groups. Now to convince politicians to stop beating up on the outsourcing boogeyman and start providing meaningful support to job losers.

Appropriate technologies get a boost

Peter Haas and his nonprofit AIDG have an excellent idea to bring low-tech solutions to basic problems of energy, water and sanitation in developing countries. Their first project is a 10-man shop in Guatemala that will build a 40-home microhydroelectric system as part of a UNDP contract. Since the workers are locals, they'll be around to fix it later. Haas envisions a network of self-sustaining businesses that build and repair low-cost technologies. Hats off. Kudos too for the impressive website - complete with blog and volunteer opportunities abroad.

I saw the article in FastCompany just in time, as it seems that Mr. Haas himself will be speaking at the Bank's auditorium today as part of a UN Week conference on Youth, Innovation and Development. I can't make it, but would love to get any comments from staffers that can.

Rwanda's miracle coffee beans

Visit Christian Science Monitor for a thoughtful profile of a Rwandan coffee cooperative that bridges the Hutu-Tutsi divide. Cooperatives like it are helping absorb the tens of thousands of prisoners being freed after serving time for acts of genocide, while contributing to Rwanda's 7% annual growth in GDP.

Partnership to Enhance Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL), which helped get the cooperative off the ground, claims that 85% of the coffee profits go to farmers. If you're in the UK, you can buy coffee from this particular cooperative online or look for Maraba Bourbon Coffee at Sainsbury's.

I love this story, because the Rwandans are competing on product quality and taking advantage of online media for brand awareness. PEARL is also quite clever at marketing, as you can see from Maraba Coffee's extensive Wikipedia entry. Score one point for fair trade.

The CSM piece is part of a series (with slideshows) on Paths to Forgiveness in African countries recovering from war. See a previous post for another Rwandan coffee article.

Freshly delivered information on FDI

UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2006 is out, and it shows that 2005 was a banner year for foreign direct investment. Notable inflows went to:

• the United Kingdom - the single largest recipient with an eye-popping $165 billion
• the European Union - with almost half the world total and 141 mega-deals over $1 billion
• Sub-Saharan Africa - with a record (but still meager) $11 billion, mostly in natural resources thanks to the commodity boom
• the Middle East and North Africa - where investment jumped 74% over 2004 numbers

See Global Insight for an executive summary of the report. (Good tip, RGE Monitor.) Also, Bill Jamieson in London takes a more nuanced look at the big numbers and tells us to take them with the appropriate dash of salt.

Bollywood and the investment climate

Bollywood needs a better regulatory and corporate governance environment to attract more foreign investment, according to delegates at last week's India Media and Entertainment Forum in London.

The Indian Industry stands at $4.5 bn today and is expected to grow in high double digits at 18% per annum compounded annually over the next five years, to reach over $10bn by 2009. The largest contributor to this growth will be the television segment followed closely by the film segment.

No word in the press release on whether the 200 delegates performed an intricate dance routine in vibrant colors.

Chinese knives and Moroccan couscous

The flow of markets has beautiful potential, maybe especially in the dusty streets and vast stretches of Chad. Today I am assisting in a meeting with a potential Chadian supplier to ExxonMobil. The man in front of us is a trader. He is over two meters tall, he wears a light blue boubou, and he jokes with us throughout the meeting. He almost manages to keep his terror just below the surface: to him this contract means his future.

I love working with Chadian traders, I find them beautifully adept, masterfully linked to networks throughout Africa, Europe, the US and China. I watch as they command the flow of goods, brining everything to this country landlocked in the Sahara. One day I decide to jump into the action and help a man get the price on a cleaning cart from France. I say, "it's easy - let's go online, pretend to buy it, and right before we check out, just look at the price." A few clicks later I am running frantically into my colleague Cheick's office waving the confirmation email in the air, "Cheick, call this number in France right away. Tell them not to ship!" Apparently I am not cut out to be a trader.

New blogger: Alex Burger

After much cajoling, Alex Burger has agreed to share with us some stories of his work in Chad and other parts of Africa. Based in Chad, he is a program manager for IFC’s Private Enterprise Partnership for Africa (PEP Africa). He and the IFC team are pioneering electronic bidding and helping Chadian entrepreneurs to gain contracts with large firms. Alex will be reporting back from time to time on how this project is going.

Update: I'll keep a running list of Alex's posts here.

• Chinese knives and Moroccan couscous
• Life interrupted
• Evacuation
• Peace