I am just back from a conference on the "Business Challenge Africa", putting business into the responsibility - and opportunity - framework for working towards the Millenium Development Goals.

The Dutch national committee for international coorperation and sustainable development (NCDO) is behind the Business in Development Network (BiD), an online-community that wants to boost entrepreneurship in developing countries.

This weekend's Observer ran an interesting piece on the UK Tory Party's fundraising: While Sting and his wife Trudi Styler, Jemima Khan, her partner Hugh Grant and some 26 others paid 10.000 GBP a head to play cards at an exclusive London member's club, they thought they did so to raise mo

Martina from Eldis blogs the current GRI conference, where GRI G3 is officially released - more information on the draft version of these guidelines for Corporate Responsibility at

Management guru C.K. Prahalad gave a lecture to World Bankers at their headquarter on "Democratising commerce". He has a critical take on an aid industry of governments and NGOs that tends to see the poor as victims to be helped.

The World Bank PSD blog points to a piece the BBC had on coffee plantations in Rwanda.

The blog at Center for Global Development has a great post on "fashion poverty".

Peter Baumann pointed me to an interesting (well, Brandon's articles are all interesting) piece by Brandon Hamber on the missing link between domestic business and charities/NGOs in Africa:

Donor money should be coming not only from the international community and channelled by local funders, but local sources should also provide funding.

The publication by International Alert defines peacebuilding as broad as its cause: violent conflict is the manifestation of a profound breakdown within a society. "Peacebuilding therefore needs to be a comprehensive transformative process: it is not an adjunct to economic growth, but rather the function of economic growth in conflict contexts." (p78)

Clearly the meta-analysis approach to conflict (Mari Fitzduff) has arrived.

International Alert deserves credit for looking closely at the peacebuilding potential of the *domestic* private sector. In line with the 2005 sector strategy of the German Ministry for Economic Development, this publication shows why business is often motivated to contribute to peacebuilding.