The Art of Doing Rural Business  “If you can conceptualize the world’s 4 billion poor as a market, rather than a burden, hey must be considered the biggest source of growth left in the world,” says C.K. rahalad,“assuming that if this market is well understood, it can be served profitably.”

Rural electrification is a rapidly developing field.  Electric grids in poor countries grow o slowly that they will not reach many young villagers in their lifetime. Yet wind urbines and photovoltaic systems already generate electricity in thousands of remote laces. These systems are likely to become more common as oil and gas prices soar and he next generation of renewable energy systems rolls out.

All this is well known, and the course of rural electrification seems predictable. Yet, nnovation will change the scene. Already, new information and communication echnologies, as well as new services for finance and insurance, health and education are mpacting rural markets. Many of these seem unrelated to rural electrification - but will ush it forward nonetheless. 

Rural Electrification is in transition, pushed on by a variety of innovations which interact nd reinforce each other.

Greater things lie ahead because innovation is about much more than technology and roducts. It is about applications, business models and entirely new markets - far ifferent from those in the industrialized urban world. The combined force of these nnovations can speed-up rural ‘evolution’ and help meet the untapped energy needs of wo billion rural customers.

Micro credit for the rural poor is an innovation made in Bangladesh. When Grameen egan village banking thirty years ago, it was not about adapting commercial banking to ome new, still underserved clientele. Rather, it was about doing business in a radical ew way - a change of paradigm.

Before, banking simply could not be done profitably in a poor rural environment. The Grameen Bank could - thanks to an ingenious business model. The Grameen model has been researched in depth and absorbed by areas other than banking. It has also inspired researchers to find strategies on how to do business at the bottom of the social pyramid. That the rural poor should have a business and make a profit is one of the basic principles.

Grameen Shakti, under its Managing Director Dipal Barua, has installed more than 110,000 solar home systems in rural Bangladesh. It has shown that solar energy applications can be scaled up massively and rapidly to provide an affordable and climate-friendly energy option for the rural poor.

The goal of Grameen Shakti is to promote and supply renewable energy technology at an affordable rate to rural households of Bangladesh. Thus, their work not only focuses on the technical and capacity-building sides of renewable energy promotion. They have also adopted the Grameen Bank's experience in micro financing to make renewable energy applications affordable for poor rural people.

Muhammad Yunus, Founder / Managing

Director of the Grameen Bank and

2006 Nobel Peace Prize LaureateAlso see:YouTube - Bangladesh - Renewable Technology Opportunities for Women 

true, look at denmark

good one^^

Cool ! Its been on the news that someone reinvented the cardboard oven and is making thousands to send to africa to off set power needs. Simple is good.