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Walter Owen Bentley: Refinement Delivered at Speed
Born in 1888 in Hampstead, Walter Owen Bentley was the youngest in a family of nine children. Fascinated to near-obsession by mechanical precision and speed, W.O. – as the Benjamin of the Bentley family was known affectionately – burst forth
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Solar Power in Brazil: Waking Up to the Power of the Sun
Boosting Brazil’s deficient energy production with large-scale solar power would seem a no-brainer: Both the required vast tracts of land and ample sunshine are available for the taking. Still, with an installed generating capacity of an estimated 17MW, solar power
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Michael Joseph: Banking for the Masses Fuels Mobile Networks
M-Pesa, mobile money, is the lasting legacy of Michael Joseph’s decade-long term as CEO of Safaricom, the largest mobile network operator in Kenya. M-Pesa allows mobile phone users to send each other small amounts of money, and access a host
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World Bank: Helping Electrification Efforts in DRC
Sub-Saharan Africa is blessed with large hydropower resources that can bring electricity to homes, power businesses and industry, light clinics and schools, and spur economic activity, creating jobs and improving human well-being. Yet, only 10% of this hydropower potential has
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The World Bank: Accelerating Africa’s Aspirations
As Sub-Saharan Africa develops rapidly, it is estimated that the continent will need millions of engineers just to reach a single Millennium Development Goal, that of access to safe water and improved sanitation. However, there is a serious shortage of
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Peter Macnee: IFC Helps Virgin Mobile Find Untapped Demographic
For Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) Latin America is virgin territory. Barely 0.5% of installed network capacity is currently leased out to providers that do not themselves own any telecom assets. UK operator Virgin Mobile has taken note and is
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PwC, South Africa: Entertainment & Media in Africa – On the Move, Changing Shape & Going Mobile
Digitisation and mobile access are changing the landscape of the South African entertainment and media industry. In South Africa, as in other markets worldwide, consumers’ access to entertainment and media content are being democratised by the expansion of the Internet
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IFC Champions Water Efficiency in China’s Textile Industry
China’s vast textile industry is a boon to the country’s economy, but consumes high volumes of water. This is a problem at a time when water pollution keeps deteriorating in China, with increasingly less clean water available for households, industry,
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Lowell McAdam – A Nimble Behemoth Enters the Golden Age of Innovation
Big numbers don’t scare Lowell McAdam. The Verizon CEO, sitting atop the largest US telecom provider, in September raised almost effortlessly $47bn through a record-shattering bond issue. The funds enabled Verizon to eject British Vodafone from its wireless operator through
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Tobias Preis: Beating the Stock Market with Google’s Big Data
Google your way to riches: It can be done and Tobias Preis has proved it. Search query data on publically traded corporations, as available from Google Trends, bear a close correlation to transaction volumes of the corresponding stock. The number
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