whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

In 1978 in the Australian outback - long before the advent of cheap computing - the School of the Air was launched. Teachers communicated with their students over ham-radio and thousands of kids got

2. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...perty rights, knows how the influence game is played. They are also treating Africa as a new market for cheap textiles and other manufactures. Many African nations are watching, with distress, as th...

3. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

... and asset prices around the world. It has also lead to a lot of groaning from blue-collar workers that cheap Chinese labour will put them out of work. Mattel has now admitted that they didn't c...

4. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

... as many people, that company can only afford to buy one because of the extra tax costs. Think how much cheaper cars would be if we didn't ban the importation of second-hand vehicles from Japan. ...

5. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t necessary for investment to take place. Somalia has an extensive cellular network that is amongst the cheapest and most effective in the world. No government licence fees, no protection from the s...

6. Dave Bullard and Graham Knox: "We can't walk on water so why not try wine?"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...-quality wines. Instead, through force of habit and political legacies, we attempt to sell bulk wine as cheaply as possible. These wines are blended, adulterated, and bottled with unique labels; the...

7. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...:  the US sets unrealistically high labour conditions on the Mexican government in order to prevent cheap imports disrupting US manufacturing; then the US compounds it by preventing Mexican worke...

8. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ly in the past decade. Now factories are popping up in the Philippines and Vietnam to take advantage of cheap labour there. The unintended consequences of minimum wage South Africa is a country of ...

9. Nigeria, or the idiots guide to stealing an election
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n order to become Alexander VI, the 215th Catholic Pope. In comparison to Nigerian elections, he got in cheap. Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua is rumoured to have spent more than US$ 100 million securing ...

10. Guess which South African cellular company offers the best contract tariffs?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Note that, under all circumstances, MTN is the most expensive, while under most circumstances Cell C is cheapest. Cell C and Virgin don't offer 3G services and have weaker network coverage. More...

11. Sarkozy's French Election: when elephants fight only the grass gets trampled
(Analysis/Analysis)

...imports.  The companies who have been affected promptly declare that the imported products are only cheaper as a result of commercial dumping; the process by which companies sell products at less...

12. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

...on in 1987, and with no historical colonies to protect, was suddenly restricted from importing (to them) cheaper, tastier and larger bananas from Latin America in favour of the ACP imports.  The ...

13. Internet Bubble 2.0: the future of dotcom depends on the mobile phone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...mic and offer astonishing technologies.  In many parts of Europe and in Japan cellular services are cheaper than the fixed telephone services.  The same is true of South Africa. Not so in th...

14. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...products developed to be used by the poor rapidly become innovations that can be used by the rich.  Cheap ophthalmic surgery, hotels or cell phone charges rapidly get disseminated.  Companie...

15. Aggregation and collaboration: a guide to making money and doing good in poor nations
(Analysis/Analysis)

... service that, by its very nature, requires a large pool of subscribers to be popular.  MxIt offers cheap SMS communication by utilising 3G and EDGE communications available from modern cellphone...

16. The redistribution of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

...prices are fixed at below their production cost, then farmers will stop farming to take advantage of the cheap food as well.  The government will then have to spend money importing food they used...

17. Coffee, the miracle of poverty, and other wonders
(Analysis/Analysis)

...their product.  Instead you are used to a wide range of prices, including a non-rated base price of cheap boxed wine if all you want is an alcoholic wine-flavoured beverage. Poor people have no ...

18. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

... benefits.  We must insist that they adopt our work practices, plus, we think that an excise tax on cheap imports would be a good idea.” Perhaps they too have a vibrant development sector....

19. Bringing Capital to Small Enterprise
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

... return on the loans made to the SMMEs to service its CLN obligations. The result; SMMEs gain access to cheaper (subsidized) financing, government has limited exposure while leveraging up the total f...

20. So how exactly do you invest in the Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...9;re not making poverty history.  Well, how exactly do we do this? When businesses turn up to hire cheap labour in impoverished countries they are accused by civil society types of exploitation....

21. Should charitable organisations be allowed to compete with businesses?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s don’t have to pay tax, and many of their inputs are sponsored, their goods can be sold much more cheaply. Consider the not-too-far-fetched example of a development organisation specialising i...

22. Does the new Apple iPhone cause poverty?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...lots of buyers." It is consumerism which has resulted in the technological revolution that created cheap telecommunications.  And it is this rising standard of living that is improving the ...

23. No matter how hard you try bad environments lead to bad results
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ar access for its other manufactures.  Investment flooded into the country to take advantage of its cheap labour, low land prices and direct access to the EU.  The Irish diaspora also came h...

24. Does Africa need the most expensive school in the world?
(Analysis/Analysis)

A report from the Pretoria News offers a chilling perspective:  The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will cost just over $ 800 000 a month to maintain - but it will never "in the

25. X Challenge: Develop the cheapest most effective school
(Analysis/Analysis)

...priced Learning Academy1 catering to a microscopic number of kids.  At $ 7 500 per year this is no cheap solution to educational problems.  Overnight Winfrey has created the most expensive...

26. Is the $ 100 laptop no more than a really expensive light-bulb?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...loping world;  after all, it didn’t need batteries to run and that must make it significantly cheaper.   Clearly, the thinking went, it is this lack of cheap information which is hold...

27. How much does a free education cost?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...one business, but for thousands of suppliers at thousands of different low-level businesses. It is much cheaper to send a child to an existing school or university than it is to build and staff a new...

28. What do Richard Branson and Che Guevara have in common?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labour, and to which they export new capital — instruments of domination — ar...

29. Poverty: when second best isn't good enough
(Analysis/Analysis)

...sewhere. Now we have alternative technology developments for the poor. From MIT's $ 100 notebook, to cheap alternative power supplies and scaled-down communications services. They won't work. ...

30. Senescence, the death of development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...inimal benefits. We must insist that they adopt our work practices, plus, we think that an excise tax on cheap imports would be a good idea.” Perhaps they too have a vibrant development sector. ...

31. Lessons in sustainable development
(Analysis/Analysis)

... It will become too expensive to buy long before the supply ends. And that will encourage us to look for cheaper alternatives. ...

32. Research Reports, eBooks and Ideas
(Static Content)

...s no mosquito nets, has a 200% excise duty on imported mosquito nets which makes them unaffordable. The cheapest protection from malaria is out of reach of the majority of Kenyans for no good reason ...