'Africa: Digitizing Money -- A Big Opportunity for Broad-Based Growth in Africa,' is the title of an op ed by Geoffrey Lamb of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Ruth Goodwin-Groen of the Better Than Cash Alliance in AllAfrica.com. The piece cites a new World Bank study by Leora Klapper and others on how better access to basic financial services can help break the cycle of poverty and contribute to broad-based growth.
Nigeria has launched national electronic i.d. cards and the country's President, Goodluck Jonathan, says the e-ID scheme will have a pervasive and positive impact on citizens.
India has launched a scheme to ensure the financial inclusion of its 1.3 billion citizens. Under this scheme, the majority of households will have a bank account within the coming months.
On August 20, the Asian Development Bank released 'Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2014'. The report has a special chapter that makes the case for an Asia-focused poverty line that is higher than the global poverty line of $1.25 set by the World Bank. The report, which also has a section on MDG indicators for the region, makes the point that all Asian countries save one—Afghanistan—already have national poverty lines above the international figure.
The Economist's Free Exchange has a post, Revisiting Ricardo, where it explains why Globalization hasn't reduced inequality.
Yoram Bauman, co-author of the Cartoon Introduction to Economics (volumes I & II) and the just-released Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, has a post on the top 11 funniest papers in the history of economics.
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