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The bright side of development
The Guardian -- Melinda Gates has had enough of bad news. So has her husband, Bill. I suppose you don't build a company like Microsoft without a sizeable chunk of optimism. So now the pair are attempting to tackle the doom-laden negativity that sometimes seems endemic to their current field of endeavour. Bill and Melinda want to talk about success in improving the health and welfare of the world's poorest people. At the UN's Millennium Development Goals summit in New York last week, Melinda was in relentlessly positive mode...

World Bank chief urges rethink of development economics
Reuters -- World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Wednesday called on economists to rethink the way they look at issues affecting developing nations and said he was overhauling the way his institution approached research. Zoellick said development economics was often too narrowly focused and not transparent to those affected by policies that emerged from the analysis. He said the global financial crisis and the rise of developing countries had forced a rebalancing of the world economy and raised questions about policy approaches...

Ghana Cocoa Board transaction to benefit small-scale farmers
Africa Good News -- A record number of commitments have been secured for the Ghana Cocoa Board's annual pre-export finance facility. The facility from the 1.2billion US dollar transaction will be used by the Ghana Cocoa Board to pay small-scale farmers cash on delivery of their cocoa beans to various buying centres at harvest time. The deal was confirmed last week by Stanbic Bank Ghana, a member of the Standard Bank Group, one of the joint mandated lead arrangers (MLAs) for the transaction along with Crédit Agricole, ICBC, Ghana International Bank and SMBC...

Nigeria at fifty
allAfrica -- Politicians, civil society groups and labour organisations have reflected on the state of the nation, 50 years after independence and given a verdict: We have recorded more failures than successes. Just as President Goodluck Jonathan will this morning present a special presidential address to the nation today to mark the country's 50th independence anniversary. The eldest son of one of Nigeria's founding fathers Chief Chukwuma Bamidele Azikiwe, while lamenting the retrogression the nation has made, however, added that "we must rededicate ourselves and work purposefully in the next 50 years so as to meet the dreams and aspirations for which our founding fathers made so much sacrifice"...