If you haven't seen it, you should check out the newest addition to the World Bank Group family of blogs: Africa Can End Poverty. Spearheaded by Shanta Devarajan, the blog promises to introduce some debate on the pressing issues of development in Africa. Want to know how to promote exports or whether Africa is growing too fast? This is the place to go. Welcome to the blogosphere! ...
If you graduated from college in the last couple of years, you will have heard of a gamut of social networking sites: Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook, to name a few. Even for those without freshly minted college degrees, these websites are hard to ignore - Facebook claims to have at least 90 million active users, and organizations as diverse as Amnesty International and Apple have established social networking presences. And while they're great for certain purposes - what did your friend do last weekend? which NYT's op-ed is he reading - they go only so far in connecting communities with very specific interests. Thus enters Business Fights Poverty, a website that aims to connect professionals who work on the business side of international development.The trick for any social...
Looking back at this post on E-government - another chance to leapfrog?, I now realize I may have gotten it wrong. The real opportunity for some governments is not to develop more participatory and easy-to-use websites. Whatever solutions a government comes up with - even one as cool as Estonia's TOM that allows citizens to comment on laws and propose new legislation - will quickly become outdated by the development of new and better internet tools. Why not get the public sector out of the business of creating end-user internet solutions and instead get the private sector to do it?
At least, that's the proposal offered in a new paper in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology called Government Data and the Invisible Hand (Hat tip: Giulio Quaggiotto). While David Robinson et al. focus on...
Much has been made of the example of some developing countries leapfrogging the adoption of outdated technologies, for example with the adoption of mobile banking. One has to wonder whether that could be the case with e-government, at least for a handful of countries. A new report out from Brookings reports on Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (Hat tip: Giulio Quaggiotto). The author ranks governments around the world on the quality of their outreach through websites, tabulating things like online information, electronic services, and disability access. While OECD countries are well-represented among the highest ranked, a number of other contenders made it into the top 20, e.g. Brazil, Dominica, Malaysia, and Ghana. In fact, these countries...
The Open Society Institute has initiated a new campaign to prevent the spread of HIV. Here's the website, and here's what they have to say:In many developed countries like the United States, medication-assisted treatment is a standard option for people who are dependent on heroin and other opiates. However, in most developing and transitional countries where injection drug use drives the HIV epidemic, these medicines are largely inaccessible—or even banned outright. The Open Society Institute’s International Harm Reduction Development Program has developed a campaign, Where's the Methadone?, to raise awareness about the glaring lack of access to these lifesaving drugs.The text seems fine to me as far as it goes. I'm just curious about the two 'superheros' that OSI has decided to use...
Collins Mbalo, resident blogger at A Nairobian's Perspective, complains about the lack of access to PayPal services in Kenya and Africa generally. While anyone can set up a PayPal account, Africans have no way to transfer this money into a bank account. PayPal has a list of the services it provides in countries around the world here.
It looks like there's not a single country in Africa under the "Send. Receive. Withdraw" heading. At best, residents in Africa only have access to the 'send' function. Africans don't even have access to a functionality that allows users in some countries to withdraw funds to a debit card. I'm not sure why this is the case, but at least in South Africa it looks like the tax authorities are afraid they're going to miss out on tax revenues. You can...
Collins Mbalo, resident blogger at A Nairobian's Perspective, complains about the lack of access to PayPal services in Kenya and Africa generally. While anyone can set up a PayPal account, Africans have no way to transfer this money into a bank account. PayPal has a list of the services it provides in countries around the world here.
It looks like there's not a single country in Africa under the "Send. Receive. Withdraw" heading. At best, residents in Africa only have access to the 'send' function. Africans don't even have access to a functionality that allows users in some countries to withdraw funds to a debit card. I'm not sure why this is the case, but at least in South Africa it looks like the tax authorities are afraid they're going to miss out on tax revenues. You can...
New business models, crowdsourcing data, falling IT costs - all represent different facets of the potential for web 2.0 applications to the development sector.
In a recent seminar at the Bank, Dion Hinchcliffe pointed me to a new item to be added to the list, borrowed from Clay Shirky: namely, "cognitive surplus". Wikipedia is one example of the surplus in action:So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of...
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....
It's that time of the year again when the Rapid Response Unit – A joint World Bank and International Finance Corporation initiative, which hosts the PSD Blog – asks its users for feedback. The survey is short (took me 42 seconds to answer all questions) and as a thank you perk, two responders will win an iPod shuffle red....
Our privatization database – listing transactions of at least $1 million from 2000 to 2006 - has been updated again. In 2006, 48 developing countries carried out 249 privatizations for a total value of $105 billion – a figure comparable to the record year 1997.
The graph below depicts the value of privatization transactions in developing countries between 1990 and 2006. The figure excludes the IPOs of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of China, which combined accounted for $35 billion - one-third of all proceeds in 2006:
Russia and Turkey followed China into the second and third place, while Poland bucked the general trend toward privatization that year.
Our interactive map has the full picture....
If you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, this interactive aid map is for you....
Can information and communication technologies (ICT) foster critical and entrepreneurial thinking at the bottom of the pyramid? This was one of the key themes that emerged from the GK3 conference last month.
Take for example the One Laptop for Child initiative. Interestingly, the debate did not center around the long-term sustainability of the project, but whether it can help move education systems in emerging markets away from the hierarchical, rule-memorizing approach.
Once you start seeing users of ICT in developing countries as creative contributors, a whole new world of opportunities emerges. Backed by InfoDev, the Equinox project allows teachers, trainers and companies in emerging markets to build and share e-learning curricula. The Locus Project, that targets marginalized...
It's that time of year again. In the sleepy alpine town of Davos, business, government and civil society leaders have come together for the 38th annual World Economic Forum. This year's theme is "The Power of Collaborative Innovation."
The forum has its own blog and the past events are availalbe through webcasts. See also Forbes ask CEOs the Davos question: "to go or not to go?"...
Econsense created an interactive database for all-things climate. Much like our Do-Your-Own-Analysis, it allows to compare and contrast data across countries, in this case, on topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, fuel tax, emissions trading and biofuel production....
Earlier this week IBM and Nokia let go of 31 "eco-patents" and released them to the public. By doing so, the technology giants hope to tap into the wisdom of the crowds. This very web 2.0 move is a sign of their recognition that when it comes to complex issues, such as spurring innovation or identify new business opportunities in the area of clean technologies, the best knowledge may well reside outside their organizational boundaries.
Also recently McKinsey added its voice to the choir of the wikinomics prophets and included "distributing cocreation" and "using consumers as innovators" among the eight emerging trends to watch in business technology. The global consulting firm predicted that "in the US economy alone roughly 12 percent of all labor...
Dubbed "YouTube for ideas," BigThink - the brain of child of Peter Hopkins with backing from Larry Summers - is a place where leading public intellectuals answer questions asked by an unseen interviewer.
For a starter see Bill Easterly opine on Jeffrey Sachs' approach to aid....
Now, here's a mash-up that got me really excited. Mapecos provides information on the environmental performance of more than 20,000 industrial facilities across the US. Interestingly, government data on toxic pollution for each facility are displayed side by side with the data provided by the facilities' managers themselves.
PR vs. reality, the malignant might say. The site, however, is designed to move beyond finger-pointing "to provide an even handed view of industrial environmental performance": a "natural experiment" with increasing access to information, as one of its founders put it.
Creating incentives to publish "hidden data" and combining data sets from different sources - it is this type of "natural experiments" that the development (and private) sector needs more of to...
Maybe it's because I am under the influence of Spoken Here, but one of the key messages coming out of the GK3 conference last week was the increasing importance of promoting local content and language to address the digital divide.
It is well known that out of the 6,000 languages spoken on the planet, only a tiny percentage is represented on the web. Perhaps less intuitive are the factors that preclude multilingual digitization of content. They range from the problems of recognition of minority languages, the lack of local language computing capacity, through the plethora of internet governing bodies involved in encryption projects, to the lack of interface between linguistic and IT expertise.
History didn't help either. When a language borders don't match the political...
Our most requested databases: the Doing Business, Enterprise Surveys, Financial Indicators, Private Investment in Infrastructure Projects and the Privatization Database, can all now be browsed from a one convenient location - the Business Planet.
The filters allow for exploration by topic, region or a country....
What do a community project in the Philippines and the U.S. Air Force have in common? An appreciation for the power of 3D modeling to visualize and manage information.
The project from the Philippines is based on Participatory 3D Modelling "aimed at facilitating grassroots participation in problem analysis and decision-making." One has to wonder whether providing communities with a chance to see the impact of future projects on their land would engage them.
And this is what the U.S. Air Force is up to, according to The Economist:Last year Waterstone, a consultancy, assembled the geodata for 13 American air-force bases and wrapped them up in a modified version of NASA's World Wind geobrowser.This makes it possible to walk through a 3-D model of each base and call up multiple layers of...
Informally existing since 1978, the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) is a group of donors and inter-governmental agencies who share our mantra: sustainable poverty alleviation through development of the private sector. IFC co-chairs this 45-member-strong Committee.
Throughout last year, the Committee has been working on the "Donor Guidance on Supporting Business Environment Reform" – a practical guide for staff of development agencies to help them do a better job improving business environment around the world.
Now that's the 30-pager is almost ready, the Committee counts on you for constructive feedback before sending it to the publisher. Bring out the Bill Easterly in you and email your comments about the content and usefulness of this guide to Simon White...
The makers of the World Bank's flagship report ranking 178 countries on their business environment, the Doing Business team, enter today a new realm – the blogosphere.
Meet the Doing Business Blog and the personalities behind the ten indicators, credited with inspiring 115 reforms worldwide....
The 2007 World Bank Entrepreneuship Database finds significant relationships between entrepreneurial activity and the quality of the enabling environment. The bank and the Kauffman Foundation are now jointly offering funding of up to $35,000 for research projects that will study what contributes to greater entrepreneurship and formal sector participation.
Research proposals are due by January 15, 2008. A pre-conference is scheduled for fall 2008 and the main conference for 2009. Detailis are here....
The Center for Global Development – the publisher of the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which ranks 21 richest countries on their policies' effect on poor countries - launched Global Development Matters.
The new site, designed with the U.S. audience primarily in mind, has five new short videos on the topics ranging from health issues to global trade and subsidies. Microfinance video below:See also their new GDB Blog. It tracks each of the U.S. 2008 presidential candidates and their stance on global development issues....
So there are 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere every year. But who's exactly producing it and in what quantities?
Carbon Monitoring for Action Database (CARMA) - a new online-database containing information from 4,000 utilities and 50,000 plants – has the answers by country, city, company or a single plant....
What opportunities are opening up for the UN (and, one might add, the World Bank) in the web 2.0 era? What is the long tail of human rights? What is the potential of crowdsoucing for development?
An inspiring post from the Internet Artizans blog has some suggestions. While the UN is thinking about it, the latest web 2.0 platform for development has been launched. For budding social enterpreneurs, more Development 2.0 ideas can be found here....
Fresh from the press, this Policy Research Report takes stock of our current knowledge of access to financial services. It analyzes indicators and determinants of access to finance and discusses the role of government. Be ready to see some of your priors confirmed and others questioned.
In many developing countries, 50 to 80 percent of the population has limited access to finance (the graphic below shows the fraction of households with a banking account).
Finance is not only pro-growth, but also pro-poor. Greater access to credit, through indirect effects in product and labor markets, also benefits the poor who are able to obtain better quality savings and payments services. But where to start and what should governments do?
Governments should build the necessary contractual and...
Legatum Institute - the creator of the intriguing 2007 Prosperity Index, a new measure based on 40 years of available data on material wealth and life satisfaction – joined MIT to build on the idea of bottom-up entrepreneurship and commercialization of new enterprise-based technologies.
The new Center hopes to turn out 30 for-profit companies a year for the next 10 years. The deadline for fellowship applications is January 31, 2008....
Not to be outdone by their UK counterparts, George Mason University has recently published a paper on "Crowdsourcing Government Transparency." The author notes that the US government data is often not online, and, when it is, it is seldom easy to access or use. The solution? "Hack, mash & peer."
By providing information through the web in the form of structured data, government agencies can increase transparency and open up opportunities for citizens to interact with data in innovative and useful ways. Mash-ups such as Maplight.org, a website that "illuminates the connection between money and politics," are a point in case.
Even more telling is the example of a blog that recruits hundreds of volunteers to sift through 3,000 pages of a "document dump" from the Department of Justice...