“Economic development is of the people, by the people and for the people,” declared entrepreneur and economist Iqbal Quadir on the TED stage back in 2005. In his talk, he offered a bold vision for bottom-up development and shared a searing critique of foreign aid — that it actually does more harm than good. His […]
While the media team is on holiday, we continue to bring you some of TED’s oldies but goodies. During the two week break, we will post noteworthy talks that contain ideas still worth spreading. Today we travel back to 2005 for Iqbal Quadir’s talk on how mobiles fight poverty. Iqbal Quadir explains his digression from […]
Via the Daily Beast : An excerpt from "Creating a World Without Poverty," by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank. In this essay, Yunus offers three thoughts about how luckier countries can help the developing world during this credit crisis, when gains of the past few years are being erased. The key: social […]
Photo: Shaul Schwarz/Reportage, for The New York Times. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company The New York Times Magazine recently tagged along with Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase and got an arresting look at the impact of mobile phones in the Third World. Chipchase, a “user anthropologist,” spoke at TED in 2007 to talk about […]
Ode Magazine writes of the inspiring efforts of TEDGlobal Fellow and agriculture activist Thomas George to build fair-play marketplaces for poor farmers in Kenya. His organization, Vipani, is a resource for workers on small farms — people without credit, connections or know-how — to access networks of other farmers, buyers, suppliers and lenders. George’s work […]
TEDGLOBAL2005 speaker and GrameenPhone founder Iqbal Quadir is launching a new center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, thanks to a $50 million structured gift from Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm. The Legatum Center “will help MIT students start enterprises in developing countries, to foster organic and durable economic growth and more equitable societies”, Iqbal […]
TEDsters have already heard this story — from speakers Iqbal Quadir, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ashraf Ghani, Jacqueline Novogratz, and several others at last June’s TEDGLOBAL in Tanzania: developing countries need investments more than aid. One of the world’s biggest charities has now acted upon this idea. CARE, writes the New York Times, is turning down some […]
Iqbal Quadir is co-founder of GrameenPhone, an innovative wireless company offering services to poor rural villages in Bangladesh. In this talk, he explains the triple impact of cell phone service in rural areas (connecting the village to the world, creating business opportunities, and generating over time a culture of entrepreneurship.) He also relates his personal […]
Big discovery for me this year is that the key enabling digital technology in the developing world is probably NOT the computer, but the cell-phone.– TEDster Tom Standage wrote a brilliant cover story in The Economist to this effect.– Iqbal Quadir‘s talk at TEDGLOBAL offered further powerful evidence via the astonishing story of Grameen Phone– […]