GTSA South America This year, Rio's world-famous carnival parade took a remarkable turn. The parade is in fact a competition between different community organizations, known as samba schools, as to who can put on the best show.
Mídia Ninja/Flickr If the US wants a glimpse into its future, it need only look at the state of Brazil after over a decade of populist rule. The same is also true for Brazil - the ascendancy of a right-wing populist backlash there is increasingly making the country look like Trump's America.
It may be surprising to discover that there is no single issue that could be more important to driving economic growth than the inclusion of women in the work force. The facts in relation to the impact of women on economic growth are simply astounding.
Emerging business leaders are not longer interested in just "doing well" - they also want to "do good" at the same time. This is why many students enrolled in MBA programs are flocking to social entrepreneurship classes and subsequently founding social enterprises, which are organizations that use market mechanisms to fulfill a social mission.
A new report by Oxford University's poverty and human development initiative finds that acute poverty is in decline and could be eradicated in some of the poorest countries in the world within the next 20 years if their poverty reduction initiatives continue at present rates.
In the past 30 years, 600 million Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty, and the successful methods employed by Beijing could potentially serve as a model for other developing countries. To decrease poverty, China invested in agricultural production. Agricultural projects were first developed individually at the grass roots level.
Last month saw the first-ever Social Enterprise Week in Dubai. This series of events attracted over 300 startups from the region and provided a forum for them to share their experiences and ideas as well as network.
Recent statistics point to the rapid economic growth in Africa. The GDP of sub-Saharan Africa is growing at a rate 5%. Over the past 10 years, 6 out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world have come from Africa.
A new interactive guide created by the Brookings Institution provides a fantastic visual guide to the progress that has been made in combating extreme poverty around the world over the past 20 years, as well as projected future declines in poverty.
American business leaders these days have a lot to worry about given the fragile state of the US and global economies. It may therefore be surprising to discover that they would be willing to take the time to reach out to Congressional leaders about something that seemingly has little to do with them: the international affairs budget, from which international aid funding is secured.
It was announced in February that a diverse group of twelve new billionaires had signed the "Giving Pledge", an initiative led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. This brings the total number of billionaires who have pledged to give at least half of their wealth to charity to 102.
Across Africa, entrepreneurial activity is booming, particularly when it comes to high-tech companies. As a result, major African cities, such as Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg and Cape Town, are competing to become the most important tech start-up hubs in Africa.
Conventional approaches to aid often get a bad rap ( although this is not necessarily deserved). This encourages innovation in the field, and one somewhat controversial new approach to aid has recently been shown to be effective: the "compact" approach of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
The middle class represents a key consumer segment to companies all over the world, and the strong growth of many companies has been supported by the middle classes of developed countries or the Global South. However, a United Nations report indicates that middle classes are becoming predominant in the developing world as well.