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Thursday, April 30, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Credible Future - Can Micro Loans Make a Macro Difference?
LATIN AMERICA: Remittances Rescue Millions from Poverty
The money sent home by migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to 45 billion dollars last year, double the total from 10 years ago. Thanks to these remittances, an estimated 2.5 million people in the region have been able to escape poverty.FINANCE: Banks Reach Out to Millions on the Margins
Expanding the financial services industry to include the poor dominated the agenda at a major meeting of Latin American bankers this week in Miami, Florida.VENEZUELA: State-Financed Experiments in the Solidarity Economy
"I used to be a buhonera (street vendor), but I got tired of working in all weather conditions, rain or shine, so I joined the Venezuela Avanza (Venezuela Advances) cooperative. Here I earn less money and the heat in the warehouse is stifling, but we hope our working conditions will improve with time," Ana Ortiz, a mother of seven, told IPS as she sat at her sewing machine.ECONOMY-SOUTH AFRICA: Microcredit Viable In the Age of AIDS?
The development of microcredit initiatives has proved a boon for thousands of the world’s poor. But, even the most ardent supporters of these schemes acknowledge that disease may undermine the effectiveness of microcredit, by threatening the ability of people to repay their loans.ECONOMY-KENYA: Microfinance, Major Problems
The power of microcredit to pull people out of destitution has been celebrated around the world during 2005, designated the 'International Year of Microcredit' by the United Nations. In Kenya, however, the concept of microcredit risks losing its bloom.DEVELOPMENT: Spreading the Gospel of Microcredit
Representatives from more than 100 countries met this week to discuss ways to expand the reach of microfinance, which is primarily charity-based, to include profitable business opportunities that can benefit poor people, governments and investors.EDUCATION-SOUTH AFRICA: The Past Isn’t History Yet
Clever student, top grades, demanding university course...For anyone in this position, using a cheque book or managing medical insurance should be a cinch, right?ARGENTINA: Cooperatives Successfully Combat Chronic Unemployment
Cooperatives in Argentina have successfully taken on the daunting task of drawing chronically unemployed men and impoverished women who have never worked outside the home into the world of work.DEVELOPMENT: Workers Without Borders
Any credible discussion of sustainable development must include an abundance of statistical data, and the United Nations World Summit this week has been no exception.DEVELOPMENT: World Faces Prospect of Teeming Mega-Slums
A new report by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) warns that governments will have to take the lead in building some 96,150 housing units per day if the world hopes to avert a massive urban crisis in the near future.DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: No Great Harvest With Land Reform Just Yet
Since the advent of democracy a decade ago in South Africa, efforts have been made to give the country's majority black population opportunities in the farming sector. During the colonial era and under apartheid, blacks were dispossessed of land - and often prevented from buying it.NEPAL: In Dark Days, a Light for Rural Women
Days before government minister Durga Shrestha updated a global meeting on Nepal’s efforts to improve life for its women, about two dozen village women celebrating graduation from a training centre danced, sang, staged a puppet play and, finally, accepted their certificates proudly from a local official.DEVELOPMENT: Connecting Nature, Power and Poverty
In a significant challenge to neo-liberal orthodoxy, a major Washington-based think tank is calling for greater local and democratic control over environmental resources as the most effective means to lift some two billion people out of rural poverty.LATIN AMERICA: Campesinos Bear Brunt of Poverty
Without dynamic, sustained and inclusive economic growth, accompanied by strong social policies, the rural population in Latin America and the Caribbean is doomed to disappear, warns a new FAO regional office report.MICROFINANCE: The Little There Was May Have Peaked
The best years of microfinance may be over despite the attempted revival by the United Nations, a leading expert on microfinance says.DEVELOPMENT: The Hope and Hype of Microcredit
Muhammed Yunus, a founder of the microcredit movement, once described it as "a programme for putting homelessness and destitution in a museum, so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long."GLOBALISATION: This Light Shines Out From the Developing World
The sun is shining on this particularly globalised project. An Indian has been encouraged by a British award to begin manufacturing solar lamps in China with material sourced in Japan to sell to South Africa and Australia.G8 SUMMIT: Middle East Gets Money and Advice
A three-billion-dollar offer to rebuild the Palestinian economy marked the strongest part of a G8 push at its summit to bring the Middle East around to its way.FINANCE: Expat Remittances Bail Out Struggling Banks
Migrant workers and their families are not the only ones gaining from lower costs and better data collection in the growing industry of transferring money across borders.G8 SUMMIT: More Aid Sought for African People, Not Gov’ts
A leading campaign group has called for a substantial part of increased aid to Africa to be channelled directly to people, rather than governments.
RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Push to Privatize Community Land in PNG Rebuffed
A group of Australian academics have accused a conservative think-tank of using inaccurate data to underpin claims that customary land in Papua New Guinea should be privatized because it was frustrating agricultural production.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Thousands of microfinance institutions serve tens of millions of the world's poor, through massive operations in rural South Asia to fledgling enterprises in West African towns. This small-scale loan movement aimed at alleviating poverty can offer life-changing potential for people who would otherwise find it difficult to obtain loans from the traditional banking sector. But microcredit is not a miracle solution to ending global poverty. If high interest rates prevail, putting recipients at risk of repeat borrowing and cycles of debt, microfinance can also have unintended consequences. IPS tracks the spread of microcredit and its impact across the global South.
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IPS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and the Microcredit Summit Campaign
