accessing markets

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Global Ideas News Brief: Mapping the next coup

Mapping the next coup, Gates debunks poverty myths with Jimmy Fallon and the limits of buy-one, give-one. Staff picks: what we're reading this week.

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Social Enterprise

Farm business advisors deliver products and profits to Cambodia’s rural farmers

Lors Thmey, which means ‘new growth’ in Khmer, sells a bundled package to Cambodian farmers that provides farming necessities and technical know-how through a business model designed to boost incomes, share knowledge and create value at each step of the supply chain.

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Social Enterprise

West meets East: Bridging local artisans with Western markets

Three businesses are finding success by blending fashion with social enterprise, providing artisans with the security of a safe job, dependable income, health care and education.

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Value Chains

Growing KFC: When exploiting markets may exploit farmers

Kentucky Fried Chicken is expanding in Africa and local farmers could benefit. But the aid organizations connecting farmers to the company may actually be setting them up for disaster.

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Youth Skills

Infographic: Young people sitting on the outside looking in

Young people have not found their place in the global economy. A new infographic illustrates the problem.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Coke and Climate Change

Coke looks into the effect climate change on its balance sheet, growing social entrepreneurship in the Philippines and Zimbabwe looks to take a step towards a cashless economy. Staff picks: what we're reading this week.

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Value Chains

Pomegranates vs Poppies: Building food markets to fight the drug trade

The crops used to produce most of the world's illegal drugs come from a small number of weak states. Can providing impoverished farmers there with alternative crops -- and the markets to sell them in -- undermine the drug trade?

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Value Chains

Is farming rice differently the key to ending hunger? India tries it

While the government lays out a plan to stockpile and distribute subsidized grains to feed the hungry, a new way of planting and farming rice across India has proven dramatic success.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Big names weigh in on global inequality

Bill Gates on global poverty, the case for global aid and rising to the challenge of youth unemployment. Staff Picks: what we're reading this week.

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Value Chains

Zimbabwe case study: Lessons from a buyer's experience of mobile money

Last August, small-scale farmers in rural Zimbabwe were preparing to harvest their crop of chilies just like they do every year. But this harvest would be like none other.

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Social Enterprise

How to build a market for eyeglasses

Nearly 700 million poor people in the world need eyeglasses. Why don't we just give them away? Turn's out that's not a scheme that can be scaled up to reach more than a tiny fraction of the people who need them. Here's a model that can.

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Social Enterprise

Quotable: Designing low-cost products that save lives isn't easy

“We thought if you design a good product, it will scale on its own,” Ms. Donaldson said. “That works in efficient markets, but most developing communities don’t have efficient markets.”

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Global Ideas News Brief: Improving microinsurance + Building peace online

Improving microinsurance, building peace online, and why solar lamps are like cash transfers. Staff Picks: What we're reading this week.

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Financial Inclusion

This is what financial inclusion looks like: CGAP announces photo contest winners

A man stacks bricks on his head to carry. Another sells newspapers. Three women carry fishing nets across golden sand dunes. These images, among the winners of CGAP’s annual photo contest, portray workers at the bottom of the economic pyramid around the world.

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Mobile Technology

Infographic: There are more mobile devices in the world than people

Happy New Year! The world is now populated by more mobile devices than people, according to an extra long infographic posted on the Digital Buzz Blog.