Turning Benghazi Into a Startup Incubator
Foreign Policy
Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, was the cradle of the revolution. Today it’s earning a reputation as a playground of extremist groups, plagued by bombings and assassinations. Yet violence has failed to deter a group of local entrepreneurs from launching the Benghazi StartUp Cup.

Egypt’s Entrepreneurs Try to Build a New Tech Hub Amid Unrest
The Atlantic
Amid Egypt’s ongoing political turmoil, there is another, tech-ier revolution afoot: the birth of Cairo’s start-up culture. Young entrepreneurs there have created everything from taxi calling services to portable solar water desalination companies, and everything in between.

Financial inclusion

How Cell Phone Minutes Can Help Map the Distribution of Wealth in Africa
The Atlantic
Without reliable government data, a group of researchers theorizes that the size of airtime purchases in Côte d’Ivoire roughly approximates wealth.

Bill Gates and Queen Maxima talk digital finance for developing markets
The Guardian
Global finance systems exclude half of all adults. Could ditching cash for digital banking encourage financial inclusiveness?

Why Buy the Cow?
Wall Street Journal
A new study in India shows the poor are often willing to earn negative interest to access reliable savings services. Low-income households may prefer to save some of their income close to home in illiquid assets such as livestock to avoid temptation spending, even if the returns are low or negative.

Western Union expands mobile transfer network
Mobile Payments Today
Western Union has recently made rapid progress in signing up mobile money service partners around the world and now has 20 mobile money deployments in 18 countries, allowing consumers to send and receive cross-border remittances on cellphones.

Looking For The Next Big Thing In Smartphones? Think Digital Inclusion In Developing Countries
Forbes
If you’re looking for a revolution involving smartphones, you’re unlikely to find one by staking out front row seats at the next new product announcement. Instead, you should keep an eye on the developing world, where the transition from basic “feature” phones to smartphones is about to reshape how a large fraction of the world’s population engages with information.

Leapfrog spotting: Mobile banking in Myanmar
The Economist
Mobile phones may regenerate the country’s withered banking system.

Extending Financial Services To The World’s Poor Is Within Reach
Forbes
Imagine if you had no savings account, no checking account, no ATM card, no way to get a reasonably-priced loan, and no ability to insure your most valuable possessions.

Economic development

The Rise of the Rest of India: How States Have Become the Engines of Growth
Foreign Affairs
When Nitish Kumar became chief minister of the dirt-poor Indian state of Bihar in 2005, kidnapping was said to be the leading industry in the capital city of Patna. Within a few years, a state once described by the writer V. S. Naipaul as “the place where civilization ends” had built one of the fastest-growing state economies in India.

Hidden value: India’s informal economy
The Economist
Activities out in the sticks may add more to GDP than was thought.

Poor Indians Prove Amartya Sen Wrong
Wall Street Journal
Even illiterate parents can make rational choices on schools for their children.

Land rights

Investors should work with farmers, not grab their land
The Guardian – Poverty Matters Blog
Land grabbing has become a hot topic in the international development community and beyond. The term usually refers to the acquisition of large areas of land by powerful investors, without respecting the rights and interests of the local users like farmers, herders and foresters.

Land title alone won’t end poverty – but it’s a start
DevEx, by Thomson Reuters Foundation staff
Seventy percent of people living in extreme poverty are women — and they own less than 2 percent of the world’s land. So would increasing women’s land ownership reduce poverty levels worldwide and improve economic development?

Innovation

A Donkey Ambulance for Women in Labor in Afghanistan
The Atlantic
A new invention uses inflatable cushions to carry women across difficult terrain.

Financing development

CauseFests: Philanthropy’s New Marketplace
Stanford Social Innovation Review
A report from the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative and Social Good Summit—the trading floors of the new philanthrocapitalism.

Coffee with Cream and Charity?
Stanford Social Innovation Review
It’s getting easier for consumers to donate to charity, but do they even want to?

Companies may do better by investing in the developing world’s farmers instead of buying up their land. Photo: Mathieu Rouquette/Mercy Corps

accessing markets, agriculture, corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship, globalization, humanitarian aid, mobile commerce, urbanization