"Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of the majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS globally, and it is being progressively undermined by the disease. In Sub-Saharan Africa AIDS is affecting the rural landscape in ways that demand a rethinking of development policy and practice, and...

Before the late 1970s, rural dwellers in Ghana had almost no access to institutional credit for farm and nonfarm activities, and in many rural communities, secure, safe, and convenient savings and payment facilities hardly existed. In response to this situation, the Government of Ghana took...

Credit for investments that pay back in the medium to long term (three to five years or longer) is in short supply in rural areas. Credit unions and microfinance institutions (MFIs), which generally have better outreach than commercial banks in rural areas, typically provide only short-term...

Identity theft is a common crime the world over. In developing countries, the damage caused by identity theft and identity fraud goes far beyond the individual victim, however, and ultimately creates a direct impediment to progress, particularly in credit markets. Recent research reveals that...

Poor people in developing countries are vulnerable to a broad range of shocks that affect their livelihoods, including illness, accidents, and death as well as loss of assets such as animals, crops, and machinery. The poor are still predominantly rural, and their vulnerability is even higher...

Over the past three years, payment strategies for emerging markets have been revolutionized by the advent of a simple cell-phone-based payment service in Kenya called M-PESA (“M” for “mobile” and “pesa” for “money”). From a small-scale pilot program in 2006, M-PESA has become an...

Investment Priorities for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Asia Shenggen Fan, Joanna Brzeska, and Ghada Shields

"In Tanzania, as in many other developing countries, the conventional wisdom is that economic reforms may have stimulated economic growth, but that the benefits of this growth have been uneven, favoring urban households and farmers with good market access. This idea, although quite plausible,...

"India's strategy for reducing poverty and hunger has always placed a great deal of importance on the agricultural sector, reflecting the fact that 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas and the overwhelming majority of them depend upon agriculture as their primary source of income....

"Brazil is the world's largest producer of ethanol, a biofuel used mainly in automobiles as an additive or alternative to gasoline. In the mid-1970s the country undertook a major program to produce ethanol, and since then the industry has had both successes and failures. Although Brazil's...