Peer to Peer microcredit

An Indian business website is doing a special series on Social Entrepreneurship, which is starting business with the goal of human benefit instead of only a goal for profit. The latest installment of the Pluggd.In series has a profile of a peer to peer microcredit website. The site Rang De gives individuals the opportunity to make the microcredit loans to low income people.

From Pluggd.In is this interview with Rang De founder, Ram NK.

Rang De is a social business with a strong focus on becoming a sustainable and scalable business that provides access to capital. Rang De is able to provide microcredit at low cost as we source social investments from individual investors. The unique proposition we offer to the social investor is that they have the ability to select an individual borrower to whom the money goes to – based on business activity and geography. Social Investor also has the ability to monitor the progress made by the borrower through a unique wellness score. Rang De engages with a network of grassroot organizations to help in screening borrowers, disbursing the loan and collecting repayments.

While the social investor gets a tangible social return and a nominal financial return of 2% flat p.a. or 3.5% APY, the field partners get 5% flat p.a. to cover their operational costs. Rang De charges 1% flat p.a. to cover its transaction costs. Rang De ensures that the borrower pays no more than 8.5% flat p.a. as interest towards the loan. There are no hidden charges or processing fees.
Startup Journey
# What made you start Rang De? And how did you go about it?

The journey started in December 2006 when I was giving a serious thought to coming back to India after a short stint in the UK. Having started as a senior consultant in Vignette and going on to become the Principal Consultant in the company, I decided that it was time to quit my corporate career and return to India and do something that is socially relevant. The desire to do something socially relevant was always there but did not have the financial means or the know how to take the plunge. After a successful career and a small amount of savings, I thought the time is now or never.Then the question of what could bring about a sustainable impact in India began to occupy my thoughts. That’s how we decided on doing something in the microcredit space. Prior to that the other causes that I really wanted to work on were – child labour, domestic help and social media.

Somehow, microcredit seemed to be the most promising as it had the potential to alleviate poverty on a large scale. Also because the root cause of almost every social problem in India emanates from poverty. Our initial research brought out a startling fact: 90% of the total estimated demand for microcredit of Rs. 200,000 cr was still unmet and that 80% of India’s population still does not have access to any form of credit.

Rang De was started with a seed funding of 6000 GBP from the founders and unconditional support from our technology(sen-sei.in) and creative(niyati.com) partners. We subsequently received funding from CSO Partners – a strategic partner of ICICI Foundation.

Did you always wanted to be a social entrepreneur?

Yes. Right from my college days, I was involved in getting people together to do something for a social cause. During my second year of engineering I organized a fund raising event where we celebrated the birthdays of 40 children from an orphanage run by Missionaries of Charity. They were simple acts of charity and volunteering. This continued during my professional life as well. I volunteered for NGOs during weekends and holidays.

Searching for Good

A search engine will give a penny to your favorite charity each time you do an internet search. Goodsearch.com has over 81,000 participating non-profits, who are not charged anything for their participation, they simply receive a check each year.

From this description that we found at Examiner.com, writer Tracy Aiello tells us more about the search engine. Tracy's article contains some other good fair-trade and charitable ideas.

Searching for Good: Mother Teresa didn’t search the latest Hollywood gossip, but I’m sure she’d bless the result. Goodsearch.com, is the simplest answer to giving back – let your web browser do it for you. Launched by a brother and sister team in 2005, Goodsearch, powered by Yahoo!, donates about a penny to a non-profit of your choice for every search executed. The site has more than 80,000 non-profits and schools registered, but if your favorite isn’t on the list, just add it, and search away. Think of it, search for quotes on Gandhi, AND give money to the Youth Federation for World Peace. Nonprofits aren’t charged to be part of the program, they just receive a check every December, which founder JJ Ramberg says is “the most fun day of the whole year!”

After realizing that their idea worked, the do-gooding family launched GoodShop.com, an online shopping center that adds to the pennies, donating a percentage of online purchases to the charity or school of your choice. There are more than 1,000 popular online merchants participating and coupons and discounts to add to the fun.

A third of British seniors in poverty

A third of British seniors are living in poverty according to new statistics. The European Commission says that 30 percent of UK pensioners are living below the poverty line, the fourth highest rate in all of Europe.

Advocates for the poor are urging for immediate action to tackle the problem.

From the Pocklington Post, we read more of the stats and the reaction.

Age Concern and Help the Aged called for ministers to act through measures such as reforming the benefits and pension system.

The figures come ahead of the Work and Pension Committee's review of Government efforts to tackle pensioner poverty, which is published on Thursday.

The EU research, which compared relative poverty in the 27 member states, showed nearly one in three UK over-65s were at risk of poverty in 2007, the same proportion as in Lithuania (30%).

It revealed that in most leading European economies, pensioner poverty levels were either below or slightly above the EU average of 19%.

While the UK fared better than the 51% in Cyprus (51%), Latvia (33%), and Estonia (33%), the figures show British pensioners are worse off than Romania, where 19% fell below the poverty threshold, Poland (8%) and France (13%). Pensioners in the Czech Republic are least likely to be living in poverty, with 5% below the threshold of an income of 60% of the national median, according to the figures.

Poor neighborhoods have great effect on children's future earnings, says Pew

The neighborhood you are raised in has a significant impact on your future livelihood, according to a new study from the Pew Charitable Trust. The Pew research says that African American children who were raised in poor neighborhoods have a greater chance of earning less when they grow up than white children. Pew says this is because less white children live in poor neighborhoods.

From this article in the Washington Post, writer Alec MacGillis explains the difference.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project caused a stir two years ago by reporting that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and '60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there. The impact of neighborhoods is greater than other factors in children's backgrounds, Pew concludes.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared with just 6 percent of white children, a disparity virtually unchanged from three decades prior.

Even middle-class black children have been more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods: Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today's dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. But virtually no white middle-income children grew up in poor areas.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents' education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

"We've known that neighborhood matters . . . but this does it in a new and powerful way," said John E. Morton, who directs Pew's economic policy unit. "Neighborhoods become a significant drag not just on the poor, but on those who would otherwise be stable."

Not much talking being done now at the WTO

Ambassadors at the World Trade Organization says there is not a lot of negotiations going on. That is despite a G-8 pledge to complete a global trade pact by the end of next year. Not much will be done for the rest of the summer, because many WTO diplomats go on vacation in August.

From this Associated Press story that we found at the Gloucester Daily Times, we read more about the slow WTO.

"Mismatch" was the word used by ambassadors Friday at the 153-member World Trade Organization in comparing that promise to reality on the ground.

They said the current talks were falling far short of the pace and intensity needed to wrap up a deal once promised as a recipe for lifting millions of people out of poverty and adding billions of dollars to the global economy.

There is a "marked and embarrassing gap" between what world leaders and top trade ministers have called for and what is being accomplished in talks, Australia's ambassador Peter Grey told a meeting of the WTO membership.

Washington's outgoing envoy Peter Allgeier said there was "no doubt" that the slow progress of technical work was failing to match the ambition of politicians, while his Indian counterpart Ujal Singh Bhatia claimed there was a "striking lack of energy" in WTO negotiations.

Bhatia said the disconnect threatens to damage the credibility of the WTO and world leaders, who have voiced their support for the Doha round at recent summits in Bali, Indonesia; Paris; L'Aquila, Italy; and Singapore.

The global trade talks were supposed to be completed in 2004 and have been at a standstill for months.

The Imagine Cup from Microsoft

We know all about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but his company Microsoft also does some things to help poverty fight. Microsoft organizes the "Imagine Cup" that invites teens to submit technological advancements that can help the environment or those in poverty.

From Monday Morning, we learn more about the competition and one example of one of the entries.

“They really are taking on all these problems”, Joe Wilson, Microsoft senior director of academic initiatives, told media prior to the finals.

“This audience wants social change in a way generations before didn’t, and innovations in technology are coming from these people who live with it, not from the guys in the corporations”.

More than 300,000 students from some 110 countries competed in the greatest turnout seen at the Imagine Cup since it was launched in 2002.

Teams containing a total of 444 college students faced off in Cairo on July 9 for top spots in nine categories, including software design, robotics and game development.

“It’s befitting that we do this here in Cairo”, said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism Group. “Egypt is the cradle of civilization”.
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Team Wafree from South Korea won top honors in an “embedded” category for creating an easy-to-use machine for raising insects that can be used as food sources in parts of the world where fertile land and water are scarce.

Each winning team gets 25,000 dollars to divide between members as they see fit, according to Microsoft.

Bringing power to the people of the Niger Delta

We have had quite a few posts lately about the armed conflict in Nigeria. The rebel factions have fought the government over frustration from having little or no access to basic services or to the oil revenues.

An article we found in Ethical Corporation Magazine touches on some projects that have helped to bring power to the people of the Niger Delta. Writers Emma Wilson and Brian Shaad also suggest some ways that more progress can be made in the region.

Total’s Egi Electrification Programme is an IPP and a community development project undertaken in partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). The aim is to provide uninterrupted electricity to all communities of Egi District in Rivers State, in the Niger Delta.

A 13 MW independent power plant uses associated gas from the nearby Obagi field. The plant generates electricity that is distributed through a local transmission network.

The project includes the renovation, expansion and activation of the electricity network in communities already connected to the grid, and a new transmission network to bring more communities onto the grid.

The Bonny Utility Company is different example of collaboration between industry, government and the community, on Bonny Island in the Niger Delta. Power is generated from a turbine using gas from the liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

The local government has provided land and tax breaks. Local industry partners including NNPC, Shell, Total, Eni and Mobil subsidise the power services.

Electricity is supplied free up to an agreed limit. Above this, every customer can obtain additional services at a subsidised rate via a pre-payment model. (About 20% of customers use just the free electricity)

Over 75% of the utility’s employees are taken from the local population and there is a policy of preference for local contractors. The community is also involved in the running of the utility via the Bonny Kingdom Development Committee.
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We suggest three scenarios for international oil and gas companies in facilitating local access to energy, based on level of commitment to tackling energy poverty and climate change.

The basic step is to improve current practice, while focusing on core business opportunities, for example by engaging meaningfully with local people and diverting associated gas for local energy needs rather than flaring it.

Pushing the boundaries a little further, large oil and gas companies might engage in innovative partnerships with governments, donors, NGOs and communities and direct social investment funding not only towards gas-based projects, but also towards renewable energy projects.

A more radical approach might entail establishing sustainable community-based utilities for decentralised power generation (using gas or renewables) and taking a more decisive role in the policy arena to promote investment in low-carbon energy systems and energy efficiency.

If international oil and gas companies are to engage in tackling energy poverty, they can’t do it alone. They and development practitioners need to overcome their traditional reluctance to collaborate on such initiatives.

Video of Muhammad Yunus on barriers to fighting poverty

In this video that we found at Current TV, Muhammad Yunus talks about barriers to fighting poverty, from attitudes to laws.

Donating money to wear street clothes

Students from an UK school got to shed their uniforms for a day, but it came at a price. Students had to donate to come into school in any street clothes, the money went to a charity that operates a orphanage in South Kenya.

From the Shield Gazette, writer Angela Reed explains the fundraiser.

Pupils at St Aloysius RC Infants in Hebburn held a non-uniform day and raised £270 for The Akhonya Trust, a Gateshead-based charity that supports a rural area in western Kenya.

It runs a home for 130 children orphaned by HIV/Aids and pays for corrective surgery, such as club feet, cleft palate and bowed legs.

It also supports an organisation called SAIPEH (Support Activities in Poverty Eradication and Health), which has just set up a feeding centre in a small village called Manyasa.

The money raised by the school allowed the Trust to buy a pure-bred cow and a goat for the feeding centre, which provides 30 orphans with two basic meals a day.

The goat has been named Aaron, after five-year-old pupil Aaron McDowell, who donated all his savings.

The children were asked to come up with a name for the cow and agreed on Milky.

The effects of the Somali pirates on aid

The Hufington Post has an interview with Steve Hansch of the Open Society Institute. Hansch just returned from Somalia after researching the pirates and political climate in the country.

Piracy began threatening international vessels in one of the main international shipping routes lying off the Somali coast after the collapse of the government there in 1991. Who are the pirates?

They are often unemployed young men, primarily from Puntland in Somalia, who have seen their fishing decline because of overfishing of their waters by international fishing. They've found that if they occasionally intercept people, the insurance companies reward them for it.

Has piracy been affecting the distribution of aid relief to the local civilian population?

No, the pirates have on occasion boarded food shipments, but overall an enormous amount of aid has been delivered. There's a completely different phenomenon going on in Somalia which I don't want to refer to as 'piracy'. In the central part of Somalia where the main aid needs are, aid workers and doctors have been taken hostage. It's obviously similar to the piracy, but it's not the same as boarding a ship. Now there are no longer ex-pat aid staff working in Somalia. The level of ex-pat aid staff working in the area is the lowest area per aid dollar spent in any country.

Aid agencies have been saying for some time now that Somalia is a highly dangerous place to work in given the continued political instability, violence, and kidnappings. After the recent assaults on UN offices in Somalia, a UN official said yesterday that the UN would not 'back out' of the country, but is it feasible to continue humanitarian efforts in this environment?

A gang takes people hostage and hopes it will make them millionaires because the government of those hostages will step in and pay the ransom. Governments have created a market by being willing to pay millions of dollars. Most aid professionals are working for NGOs and the ransoms that have been paid have not been negotiated at the initiative of those organizations, which could use their position to work through mediators. Governments have leapfrogged the NGOs.

Are aid agency ex-pat staff likely to return in the coming months?

I don't know when they'll go back in. Crime is a funny thing. In the long term history, some things don't seem to change.

What is the situation regarding aid distribution now?

Aid is not just about taking stuff and distributing it. The largest share of U.S. government aid is in food aid, and it's being distributed through local Somali NGOs. But the more professional people from other countries are the people who would do the project supervising and monitoring, and they are not able to get through. One of the things humanitarian people do is make sure that key things are done; it's not just about spending dollars. That's been dramatically reduced, and that phenomenon is really being seen this year. Effectively in 2009, there are no ex-pats working in Somalia.

A government response and a peaceful protest in South Africa

Some of the protests have begun to settle down in South Africa. Earlier this week, violent protests erupted after people took to the streets to protest the lack of basic services many have in the country. Many years after apartheid ended, many people still don't have access to water or decent housing in South Africa.

From Reuters written by Marius Bosch we read of the governments response and one peaceful protest that happened Wednesday.

South Africa's government on Thursday threatened to crack down on violent protests which erupted this week over jobs and living conditions, posing an early challenge to President Jacob Zuma.

Police fired rubber bullets and teargas on Wednesday at township rioters who were calling for the removal of local officials of the ruling ANC party they accuse of corruption. Scores of protesters have been arrested.
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Police said calm had returned to Siyathemba township, southeast of Johannesburg, after four days of rebellion. Violence flared in various townships after a series of strikes.

The unrest, with scenes reminiscent of attacks against foreigners last year that killed 62 people, have dented South Africa's hope of showing a positive image less than a year before the country hosts the soccer World Cup.

In the Ramaphosa squatter settlement east of Johannesburg, one of the main trouble spots during last year's violence, thousands of residents staged a peaceful protest march.

Watched by heavily armed police, the protesters carried placards. One said: "Poor service delivery is what we hate."

Many South Africans say local governments have failed to provide jobs, housing, sanitation and medical services, and have instead promoted a culture of nepotism.

"I want to live like Zuma in a house with electricity. I'm tired of living in a shack, I want a flush toilet," said Nicolas Mabitsela, who lives in the Ramaphosa settlement.

Drawing attention to endosulfan

The fair trade underwear company Pants to Poverty is organizing protests to warn about the use of a chemical in cotton processing. Pants to Poverty is organizing the protest in 16 different countries, and is getting help from celebrities from the UK and Bollywood.

From the Ethiopian Review, we read more about the chemical that is getting the attention.

They are calling for a ban on the use of the harmful pesticide endosulfan, used in underwear production.

It can cause cancer, birth defects, respiratory problems and sterility among cotton farmers and their families.

Pants To Poverty, a Fairtrade underwear company, says toxic cotton pants containing traces of the chemical are being sold on the UK high street.

Just one pair of non-organic cotton pants can use 10ml of the chemical – enough to kill a person if directly exposed.

Ben Ramsden, founder of Pants To Poverty said: "Using pants as our metaphor, this campaign explains both the good and the bad about the cotton industry and points towards a brighter future."

Laboratory tests on 1,000 pairs of pants from UK shops showed one in 50 tested positive for the dangerous pesticide.

It has been banned in 62 countries due to its high toxicity, but its use is still permitted in India and other developing nations.

A new stove to help those in poverty

A new stove is being developed in the UK to help those in poverty make more efficient use of wood fires. Most poor in the under-developed world use wood fires to cook, but most of the energy conducted in the fire goes up in smoke. The SCORE stove helps to contain that energy and use if for other means.

From the website Gizmag, writer Paul Lester tells us more about the invention.

Two years ago experts began work on a revolutionary new stove that could help reduce poverty in third world countries. The £2m SCORE project (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity) was designed to offer cooking, refrigeration and energy production from a wood-powered generator and subsequent developments have now brought the project to a point where it can be mass-produced.

With two billion people worldwide using open fires to cook and around 93% of the energy produced going to waste, a suitable way to harness this power and transform it into usable energy would seem to have obvious benefits. Now able to utilize other material including dung and other locally available biomass, the unit would be capable of converting heat into acoustic energy and then electricity, for around one hour’s use per kilogram of fuel.

The cost target for the generator is £20 per household, and with SCORE currently being tested in the UK and Nepal the team is now looking for sponsorship in order to take the product to the locations for which it is intended.

Project director Paul H. Riley is optimistic about the future: “We have had tremendous interest in the SCORE project from around the world and the SCORE community —launched a few months ago — is working extremely well. This includes entrepreneurs and volunteers that adapt the stove for local use among its members.”

Unemployment statistics from Kentucky

A new Brookings Institution study finds that unemployment in the U.S. is becoming more of a suburban problem than an inner city problem.

From Louisville, Kentucky's Courier Journal, reporter Jere Downs gives us some stats on the poor in his local area.

As the recession drags through a second year, the Brookings report found that poverty is weighing on suburban areas, particularly newer, far-flung settlements. Of the largest 100 U.S. metro areas, Louisville is among 75 where the burden is growing faster outside of cities, according to the nonprofit think-tank based in Washington, D.C., which analyzed the growth of the jobless rate, new unemployment claims and applications for federal food stamp assistance in cities versus suburbs over a one-year span.

Researchers considered Jefferson County the region's primary urban area. They compared its economic status with the surrounding Bullitt, Henry, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby and Trimble counties in Kentucky and Indiana's Clark, Floyd, Harrison and Washington counties.

In those suburban counties, the number of jobless rose 88 percent, from 14,492 people in May last year to 27,241 two months ago, said Elizabeth Kneebone, a co-author of the report entitled "The Crabgrass Recession. Suburbs Feeling More Pain than Past Downturn."

In contrast, Jefferson County's jobless rose 72 percent, to 37,193 from 21,580, in the same time period, she said.
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From May 2008 to May 2009, Jefferson County's jobless rate rose 4.3 percentage points, to 10.3 percent from 6 percent, of those available to work, the report found. In surrounding counties, the rate of unemployed rose 4.7 percentage points, to 10 percent from 5.3 percent.

Applications for federal food stamp assistance, however, climbed at a higher rate in Jefferson County than in surrounding areas from January 2008 to January 2009, Kneebone said. Within Jefferson County, those receiving food stamps rose 10.6 percent, to 101,510 recipients from 91,755. In the surrounding counties, those on food stamp aid rose only 7.7 percent, to 49,109 from 45,591.

Two different Nigeria's

As a part of a series of reports on Nigeria, the Financial Times has an overview of the country and it's path to economic growth. There are two very different Nigeria's; one has a large boom in the private sector, the second is the slow path to provide basic services to people due special interests inside it's government.

Writers Matthew Green and Tom Burgis develop the two countries story further.

From the hawkers dodging traffic in the choked streets of Lagos to the billionaire oligarchs in penthouses above, Nigeria seethes with restless ambition and an awareness of potential unfulfilled.

Yet 10 years after the country’s transition from military to civilian rule, progress towards reversing decades of declining living standards and restoring the social contract between the government and the people is still agonisingly slow.

In the 26 months since President Umaru Yar’Adua took office, frustration has intensified.

On paper, his promised reforms in energy, power and infrastructure could lay the foundation for an economic lift-off that would transform the prospects of Nigerians.

Faith in his government’s ability to deliver, however, is evaporating. With the political class gearing up for general elections in 2011 – that risk degenerating into a repeat of the mayhem sponsored by rival politicians in 2007 – even the most ebullient of Mr Yar’Adua’s ministers acknowledge time is running out.
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That Nigeria has survived repeated bouts of political and economic crisis since independence in 1960 is a tribute to its people’s resilience: yet there is a sense today that the country is teetering between two very different futures.

The optimistic one is that a burst of private-sector led growth, unleashed by government action to solve the chronic power crisis diversifies the economy and spurs a rapid re-emergence of the middle class.

Companies such as HiTV, a satellite television station profiled in this report, show that dynamic businesses can offer jobs to the country’s army of unemployed graduates. The sheer scale of the Nigerian market continues to act as a magnet for investors and an inspiration for entrepreneurs.

The second vision is bleaker, informed by images of communal violence that killed several hundred people in the city of Jos in November that underscore the growing social pressures.

Nigeria’s population – 40 per cent of which is under 15 – will grow from 140m in 2005 to more than 200m by 2025, according to the United Nations. Even today, only a fraction has access to clean water, adequate housing or healthcare.

For a teenage generation warehoused in a failing state education system the consumer lifestyles championed by hip-hop stars and on homegrown TV channels remain a seductive yet remote aspiration – nowhere more so than in the rapidly de-industrialising north.

“The collapse of the architecture of governance means the government has lost its moral authority to hold things together,” says Matthew Hassan-Kukah, vicar-general of the archdiocese of Kaduna and a respected commentator. “People are falling back on vigilante groups.”

Analysis on the causes of hunger in Uganda

A great analysis from Uganda's The Monitor tries to look into the root causes of hunger in the nation. In her piece, author Evelyn Lirri looks into several factors such as the armed conflict, people too poor to purchase food, failures of government, and climate change.

For our snippet, we focus on the inability to purchase food and population growth, but we encourage you to give the full article a read. We found the analysis at All Africa.

While the number of people living in abject poverty - described as living on less than a dollar, or Shs2,100 a day - has fallen from 56 per cent in 1992 to about 30 per cent today, the subsistence nature of the country's agricultural sector means many do not have cash incomes to buy food when needed.

Many of those with a cash income have simply been priced out of the food market. Figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics show that inflation hit double digits earlier this year on the back of high food prices as drought and exports to lucrative emerging markets put pressure on food supplies.

Food inflation, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) stood at 23.8 per cent for the year ending May 2009. The rising food prices were initially a blessing to producers, says State Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Musa Ecweru.

"The risk has been that at times they sell almost everything and at the end of the day, the money they have is not able to buy food when there is a crisis," he said.

According to Prof. Nuwagaba, while official figures put the number of Ugandans employed in the agricultural sector at 70 per cent, the reality on the ground shows many young people are quitting agriculture for petty jobs in urban centres like riding boda boda (motorcycle taxis).
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Another problem contributing to Uganda's hunger is the unchecked population which is currently growing at 3.2 per cent annually, says Prof. Nuwagaba.

This means that every 20 years, the population is expected to double and by 2025, the population will be 56 million and 106 million people by 2050.

Projections for the year 2000 to 2050 indicate that a growing population will increase pressure on the available land. At the current growth rate, population density, which is around 124 people per square kilometre, will reach 233 in 2025 and 438 in 2050. Increasing land conflicts across the country are probably a pointer of things to come.

This population growth has not been matched by growth in food production; a country which had only five million people and was self-sufficient in food when the first census was carried out in 1948, is now on the brink of starvation as its tries to feed more people from a finite size of land without managing the elements.

New U.N. report measures poverty in Arab countries

A new report from the UN's Development Program measures the development standards of the Arab region. The report called "Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries" uses the term "human security" when talking about basic needs.

The report from the UN gives us a few statistics of poverty inArab nations that are worth noting. We found a summary of those stats at the MEMRI Blog.

A survey of a sample representing 65% of the population indicates that the average level of poverty was the lowest in Lebanon and Syria with a rate of 28.6-30 percent, the highest in Yemen at 59.9 percent, and 41 percent in Egypt.

Based on the survey, the report estimates that 65 million people live at the poverty line.

In 2005, unemployment was estimated at 14.4% in the Arab countries, compared with 6.3 percent globally. Unemployment among youth represents the biggest social challenge.

Violent protests of a lack of basic services in South Africa

Riots are breaking out in South Africa as protesters a getting angry over a lack of basic services in the country. People without water or decent housing have taken to the streets to protest.

From the BBC, we read more about the latest violent protests and the conditions behind them.

Police have fired rubber bullets at demonstrators in Johannesburg, the Western Cape and the north-eastern region of Mpumalanga.

More than 100 people have been arrested during the past week.

In Mpumalanga, there were reports of foreign-owned businesses being looted as foreigners sought police protection.
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President Jacob Zuma promised to improve service delivery when he came to power in May, and said fighting poverty was his priority.

South Africa announced in June that it was facing its worst recession in 17 years.

The recession and job losses have added fuel to long-standing grievances over the government's failure to deliver basic services, and the protests are the most direct challenge to President Zuma since he came to power, our correspondent adds.

Fifteen years after the African National Congress won its first election, over a million South Africans still live in shacks, many without access to electricity or running water.

Jeffrey Sachs warns of red tape tying up the G-8 food security pledge

In his latest commentary, Jeffrey Sachs applauds the G-8 decision to put 20 billion dollars into agriculture.

A few years ago, research conducted by the UN's Millennium Project found that food production could dramatically increase if small, peasant farmers are given good seeds and fertilizer to grow with. So the G-8 pledge of money hopes to give more of these inputs to small farmers.

However, Sachs says that a lot could stand in the way of getting the inputs to the farmers. Sachs warns against the aid money being tied up in bureaucracies and red tape. We found his latest commentary at the Business World Online.

A consensus has now been reached on the need to assist smallholders, but obstacles remain. Perhaps the main risk is that the "aid bureaucracies" now trip over each other to try to get their hands on the $20 billion, so that much of it gets taken up by meetings, expert consultations, overhead, reports, and further meetings. "Partnerships" of donors can become an expensive end in themselves, merely delaying real action.

If donor governments really want results, they should take the money out of the hands of 30 or more separate aid bureaucracies and pool it in one or two places, the most logical being the World Bank in Washington and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome. One or both of these agencies would then have an account with several billion dollars.

Governments in hunger-stricken regions, especially Africa, would then submit national action plans that would provide details on how they would use the donor funds to get high-yield seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, farm tools, storage silos, and local advice to impoverished farmers. An independent expert panel would review the national plans to verify their scientific and managerial coherence. Assuming that a plan passes muster, the money to support it would quickly be disbursed. Afterward, each national program would be monitored, audited, and evaluated.

This approach is straightforward, efficient, accountable, and scientifically sound. Two major recent success stories in aid have used this approach: the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations, which successfully gets immunizations to young children, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which supports national action plans to battle these killer diseases. Both have saved millions of lives during the past decade, and have paved the way to a new more efficient and scientifically sound method of development assistance.

Not surprisingly, many UN agencies and aid agencies in rich countries fight this approach. All too often, the fight is about turf, rather than about the most effective way to speed help to the poor. Obama, Rudd, Zapatero, and other forward-thinking leaders can therefore make a huge difference by following up on their pledges at the G-8 and insisting that the aid really works. The bureaucracies must be bypassed to get help to where it is needed: in the soil tilled by the world’s poorest farm families.

Sex education and microcredit from a creative Thai NGO

It's an older story, but we we wanted to link this piece on a non-governmental organization from Thailand that uses creative even unconventional means to promote safe sex in the country. Population and Community Development Association was formed over 35 years ago to promote safe sex and abstinence in a country where people laugh at the Thai translation for condom.

From INSEAD Knowledge, writer Karen Cho tells us about safe sex and microcredit programs run by PDA.

PDA’s creative tactics included a microcredit programme targeted at mothers. Instead of encouraging mothers to have another child, they were told they each would win a pig if they refrained from getting pregnant. They listened, and not only got their pig, but raised the animals for six months and even managed to sell them for a profit.

“So the message was: ‘the more children you have, they poorer you become.’ We try to get them to focus their time and energy on income generation rather than having children,” says Kulapongse.

She says the average number of children per household has since fallen to 1.2 from seven. “It’s a huge achievement of Thailand overall, including PDA – the population growth rate has decreased from 3.3 to 0.3 per cent.”
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Operating on the belief that local people are best suited to shape and sustain their own development, PDA set up the Village Development Bank, part of a development initiative to eradicate poverty. It provides microcredit financing, which would be otherwise unavailable, to villages to start their own enterprises.

“We believe that the poor are still poor because they lack two things: access to credit and business, and life skills training. The Village Development Bank gives villagers access to microloans with affordable interest rates. We also give them skills to run the fund, distribute loans and do bookkeeping. After that, we also encourage them to use the profits from this microcredit fund towards development activities for their own village, so it’s very sustainable and it works,” says Kulapongse.

She adds that this kind of model has been developed against a backdrop of PDA’s experience in rural development stretching more than 25 years. It is a long-term process and requires a lot of participation from villagers to ensure the bottom-up approach, but definitely yields positive and concrete results, she says. In tsunami-affected areas, for example, “not only did the fund grow, but the mindset and attitude of the villagers changed too. With consistent monitoring and skills enhancement, it changed the role of women and youth in that area.”