PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

Telecoms talk at the WTO

Daniel Annerose, CEO of Manobi, an African mobile data services company, and José Alfredo Rizek, executive director of Indotel, the Dominican Republic's telecoms regulator, joined in a telecommunications services debate hosted by the WTO (video available).

They discussed the 10th anniversary of the Basic Telecommunications services deal and its implications for governments, consumers, businesses, and for development.

Socialist legacy: aversion to equality?

A new paper titled, Attitudes to equality: the "socialist legacy" revisited, analyzes whether residents of post-socialist countries have "a preference for greater income equality, other things being equal, owing to the legacy of socialism." Surprisingly or not, the authors find little evidence that supports this claim.

The authors compared the preferences of former Soviet Union countries to those of other Eastern Europe and other groups of developed and developing countries. They found that as a group, there is a significant lower preference toward moving to greater income equality!

One cell phone for every two humans

"Eventually there will be more cell phone users than people who read and write," says Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google in a recent article by the Washington Post. The article has some interesting facts about how cell phone technology grew so fast since its creation that no one could predict the magnitude of this expansion.

There's a particularly interesting anecdote that illustrates how unpredictable cell phone expansion has been. Mckinsey & Co., the consulting firm, in 1980 underestimated what the size of the cell phone market would be in the year 2000. Its number was not even 1 percent of the actual market size in 2000.

Teaching a new dog an old trick?

Will online social investment markets replicate the flaws of traditional development models, or will they improve their effectiveness? That's the question raised in a new report that provides some empirical evidence to the so far rather anecdotal argument that we are shifting towards a Development 2.0 paradigm.

In theory, start-ups like MyC4 or GiveIndia begin from a clean slate and therefore need not fall in the same traps that hampered the effectiveness of traditional development players.

However, the analysis of 24 online social markets leads the authors to conclude that, whilst they are "relentless innovators" that succeed in attracting a new donor base, their transformative power is hindered by an all too familiar problem to "old" development players – the lack of reliable performance data and a common reporting framework.

Starting a business: help from Harvard Business School

Harvard University's Working Knowledge compiled resources for those thinking about starting up their own business. Topics include legal issues associated with new enterprises, managing resources, product development, and keeping owner control.

As a bonus here's other useful information for entrepreneurs on the ease of doing business across 178 economies.

Microfinance: so good it's fit for children's bedtime story

A recently published children's book titled, One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, tells the tale of a young Ghanaian boy, who with the help of a small loan is able to dramatically improve his living conditions with his widowed mother. Kojo, the protagonist boy, buys one hen after receiving a loan from his mother and then sells eggs to his community. After saving and soundly investing he is able to expand his operations and eventually can afford to attend college.

Kojo’s story is based on the life of Kwabena Darko, who created in 1994 Sinapi Aba Trust, which engages in microfinancing in Ghana. The only hope is that if Cinderella doesn't spark development ideas, perhaps Kojo will. 

Joining the dialogue: Environmental Capital

Following up on today's theme, it's worth adding the recent addition by the Wall Street Journal - it's own blog about the business of the environment. Here's more from the editors themselves:

"[This blog] tracks how growing green concern, particularly over climate change, is roiling established industries and spurring new ones – and how that shift is affecting investors, consumers and the planet."

Putting a price on carbon: time to get hands-on

The recent spate of announcements by financial institutions looking forward to a world with a price on carbon - and their decisions to set a price for carbon in their own calculations on project viability or to adhere to generic principles on carbon which may influence the future shape of their portfolios - are the latest evidence of a world preparing itself for some kind of public policy context to emerge from international negotiations. But perhaps of equal significance is evidence that the risks and opportunities from managing exposure to carbon are seen as real and present, not potential and distant.

To dig down into performance and beyond rhetoric a number of challenges face financial institutions. A carbon price helps one understand risk in a future where carbon carries a price, but how do you decide where to invest in carbon intensive projects and where not?

Internet for all

It is estimated that 1.1 billion people have Internet access world-wide. That still leaves out a large number of potential Internet users, or potential costumers, depending on how one looks at it. That's probably why some entrepreneurs have been tackling the issue of how to close this divide.

One interesting approach was taken by Meraki, a Silicon Valley technology company. It developed cheap and simple network devices that allow ordinary Internet users to set up networks and share costs so that more people can connect. The company, which was named a "Technology Pioneer" at the recent World Economic Forum, has helped extending wireless Internet in about 70 countries.

Have you heard of other creative approaches to this issue?

Too much or too little - the paradox of information for development

"The paradox of the human rights community is that it is an information-processing industry that has limited access to information technology" says Jim Fruchterman, the winner of the Skoll Award for Social Enterpreneurship in 2004 and 2006 and founder of Benetech – an organization that creates technology used by human rights and literacy program workers.

Benetech's own Web site goes on to observe that "human rights groups throughout the world gather massive amounts of violation data. Much of it never reaches its full potential or intended audience."

Isn't the same paradox common to other areas of the development sector, including policy making and private sector development?