How to build a microfinance scheme in Swaziland
If you build it, they will come?  This may be true for Kevin Costner and baseball fields but does not work in Swaziland.  Microcredit has been lauded as the magic potion for developing country ailments.  If your country has poverty, weak markets, illiteracy, hyperinflation, or scary sewer rats [...]

Following several meetings to clarify scope and expectations, the three of us rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We are each tackling different business issues ranging from the development of a marketing strategy for the non-profit component of the commercial enterprise Gone Rural, to evaluating different options for a micro-credit/loan scheme and advancing [...]

So why did I leave Paris? A large part of me didn’t want to leave. I was making great friends there and was quite literally having the time of my life. It seemed almost illegal to have that much fun and be so happy. But I knew as soon as I applied, [...]

Before coming to Swaziland, I had pictured a country in misery – dry dirt roads with shacks that house worn out bodies drawn thin from disease, from AIDS. Swaziland has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world. A startling 40 % of adults are HIV positive and the average life expectancy has now [...]

BIO: Ling Ling is passionate about the creation and growth of businesses for economic development in Africa and Asia. She has worked both in the public and private sector in business analysis, financial services, microfinance, information technology, systems design, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting, microenterprise development, value chain development, and biofuels. Ling Ling has [...]