Capital flows, mainly foreign direct investment (FDI), to sub-Saharan Africa rose by 20 per cent in 2011 to $48.2 billion, thanks to rising economic growth and the growing middle class.

Les chiffres publiés mercredi par la Banque mondiale relèvent un recul de la pauvreté en Afrique subsaharienne. Pour la première fois depuis plus de 30 ans, le nombre d’Africains vivant dans une extrême pauvreté représente moins de la moitié de la population du continent.

[UNEP] New York/Geneva - The world has met the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, well in advance of the MDG 2015 deadline, according to a report issued today by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). Between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and protected wells.

Kenya last year attracted the highest amount of private equity funding for infrastructure in East Africa, with the country getting more than half the number of the deals, a survey carried out by consultancy Deloitte shows.

Poor infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, a shortage of manpower, and inefficient management of resources are making public healthcare increasingly irrelevant, say experts

L'Europe a tenté d'oublier crise de l'euro et récession en fêtant 2012, après l'Asie et le Moyen-Orient, avec feux d'artifices et rassemblements dans les capitales.

FDI attraction to infrastructure construction, high-tech, green technology, support industries, network production and global value chain requires positive and big changes in policies in 2012, the Dau Tu Chung Khoan newspaper quoted Vice Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen The Phuong. Till last December 15, Vietnam had 13,667 operational FDI projects with total registered capital [...]

Renewables offer an important solution for the energy needs of poor communities.The most significant barrier to the wide-spread adoption of these technologies is their upfront costs. This is why microfinance makes such an ideal partner for renewables – providing loans for the upfront costs that can be paid back over-time.

EB-ACCION Savings and Loans (EB-ASL), a Ghanaian microfinance institution, and ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) of Nigeria, have recently won awards commemorating their contributions to providing microfinance services to low-income entrepreneurs. Both organizations count EcoBank, a Togo-based banking group, and US-based nonprofit ACCION International as investors. EB-ASL, based in Accra, won the 2011 “Microfinance Project of [...]

Microfinance programs provide small-scale financial services to low-income individuals. Loans are designed to foster sustainable economic empowerment and capacity building for people in developing regions. Unfortunately, microfinance and microcredit programs have come under criticism recently following out of control lending practices by unmonitored and irresponsible organizations. Should development practitioners respond by abandoning efforts to bring financial services to the poor?”