On Shifting Ground

In a time of slowing economic growth, Africa is home to six of the top 10 fastest growing markets. Rich in natural resources and cheap labor, Africa is poised to become a powerful economic force over the coming years. Drawing on decades of experience in frontier markets, and insights shared by leading African and multinational CEO's, Jonathan Berman will tackle questions on the incredible opportunities and challenges facing business in Africa.

Speaker Jonathan Berman is a Senior Fellow of the Vale Center at Columbia University, and a Senior Advisor at Dalberg.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1221

Direct download: 1_22_14_Africa_Success.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 8:00pm PDT

After more than six decades of intensive effort to end global poverty and an investment of $2.5 trillion by the rich nations of the world, 2.7 billion people still live on $2 a day or less - a number even greater than the total population of the planet when the effort began around 1950. Although huge advances have been made in healthcare and, to a slightly lesser degree, in education, the modest success of economic development efforts has brought few if any meaningful benefits to the world's poor. In the view of Mal Warwick, the reasons for this lack of success are many, but several stand out. Anti-poverty efforts have almost exclusively been imposed from the top down, usually focusing on building an urban middle class, and these efforts have been hampered by three seemingly insurmountable obstacles: a lack of adequate funding, the failure of even the most successful efforts to achieve scale and the difficulty of delivering services to the often isolated rural villages where the majority of the world's poor are living. By tapping the virtually unlimited resources of the private sector, existing businesses and social entrepreneurs can deliver income-generating products and services to hundreds of millions of $2 a day customers - and make handsome profits in the process.

Mal Warwick is Co-Author of "The Business Solution to Poverty".

For more information about this program, please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/media-library/event/1218#.UtQP6WRDvhs

Direct download: 1-8-14_Business_Poverty.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 8:00pm PDT

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