The 85%
Business & Economics Podcasts
We are witnessing a global geo-economic transformation centered on the rise of emerging markets, the growth of a new global middle class, rapid urbanization, and unprecedented physical and technological connectivity. In a world where 85% of the world’s population lives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the centers of gravity in these emerging markets are reshaping the global landscape. Headquartered in Dubai, emerge85 collaborates with an array of stakeholders to uncover and accelerate the most promising solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. If you share our passion for a more inclusive digital future, reach out.
Location:
United States
Description:
We are witnessing a global geo-economic transformation centered on the rise of emerging markets, the growth of a new global middle class, rapid urbanization, and unprecedented physical and technological connectivity. In a world where 85% of the world’s population lives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the centers of gravity in these emerging markets are reshaping the global landscape. Headquartered in Dubai, emerge85 collaborates with an array of stakeholders to uncover and accelerate the most promising solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. If you share our passion for a more inclusive digital future, reach out.
Twitter:
@e85lab
Language:
English
Website:
http://www.emerge85.io/
Email:
contact@emerge85.io
Episodes
Learning Languages and Life Experiences from Refugees
8/30/2018
Meara Sharma talks with Aline Sara, founder of a startup called NaTakallam: “we speak” in Arabic. The organization pairs refugees and displaced people, right now mostly Syrian refugees in Lebanon, with people all over the world who want to learn Arabic. It leverages the gig economy to create a remote income stream for refugees, many of whom aren’t allowed to work, and it also helps language learners practice the kind of conversational Arabic not often taught in formal settings. Beyond that,...
Duration:00:36:27
How Cryptocurrency Can Reshape Financial Systems in the Emerging World
8/28/2018
This week on the podcast, we talk with Tricia Martinez. She’s the founder of Wala, a financial services app, and Dala, a cryptocurrency that goes with it. Based in Cape Town and currently operating in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, Wala enables people to send digital money -- Dala -- to family across borders, as well as borrow, make transactions, and save. Many of these consumers haven't had a formal bank account before, or they conduct their lives primarily in cash -- both of which...
Duration:00:31:57
Overcoming Stigma Around Reproductive Health Through E-Commerce
7/16/2018
This week we talk with Joanna Bichsel, the CEO and co-founder of Kasha, an e-commerce platform based in Rwanda that delivers reproductive health and personal care products to largely rural, low-income women. The company is committed to helping women in the emerging world access products that are often stigmatized, like birth control and pregnancy tests, through mobile ordering and discreet delivery systems. Kasha started in Rwanda in 2016 and has recently expanded into Kenya. Producer Meara...
Duration:00:35:29
The Rise and Fall of the Makoko Floating School
7/3/2018
Stories of social change in the emerging world tend to involve new and exciting ideas, bold visions, and innovation. But sometimes there’s a disconnect between how a project is shown to the outside world — through press, fundraising, accolades — and how it actually functions on the ground. Like in the case of the Makoko Floating school in Lagos, Nigeria. Makoko is a massive slum built along the Lagos lagoon — many of its houses are on stilts, and canoe taxis are common. When a school there...
Duration:00:27:47
Tony Seba Says Energy As We Know It Will Be Obsolete By 2030
6/19/2018
This week, we bring you a conversation with Tony Seba, a serial entrepreneur, educator, and thought leader on disruption. He’s the author of the book "Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation – How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030." Emerge85's Afshin Molavi recently spoke with Tony Seba at a conference on sustainability at the International Finance Corporation, IFC, in Washington DC. They talked about how...
Duration:00:16:20
Ian Bremmer on the Failure of Globalism
6/12/2018
This week, host Afshin Molavi (@AfshinMolavi) talks with Ian Bremmer (@ianbremmer) about his new book, "Us Vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism." It's a clear-eyed, often bleak examination of the fallout from a globalized world: how those who have been left behind are expressing outrage and fighting for survival, and what governments are doing about it. Bremmer is president and founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global political risk research and consulting firm, as well as a frequent...
Duration:00:31:06
The Blazing Aspirations of India's 600 Million Young "Dreamers"
6/5/2018
More than half of India’s 1.3 billion people are under the age of 25. As the UN has noted, “Never before have there been so many young people,” and “Never again is there likely to be such potential for economic and social progress.” But the challenge of educating and employing hundreds of millions of young people is staggering, perhaps even inconceivable. At the moment, less than 17 percent of India’s graduates are immediately employable. So, this desperate, often frustrated generation of...
Duration:00:33:55
Tech Titan Nandan Nilekani Says the Time for Data Democracy Is Now
6/1/2018
Nandan Nilekani (@NandanNilekani) is one of India's most successful tech leaders. In 1981, he co-founded Infosys, the massive IT and outsourcing company. After more than 35 years there, he became the architect of the Indian government's Aadhaar program, the biometric database that has registered more than a billion Indians with an ID number to access a range of government and private services. He's also invested in several startups and founded the digital education platform EkStep. In his...
Duration:00:18:40
To Combat Traffic Jams, Think Outside The Road
5/15/2018
If there’s one thing that unites the world’s fastest growing cities, it is the mind-numbing experience of being stuck in traffic. Across the emerging world, the cost of congestion, which cuts into work hours and erodes people’s well-being, amounts to economic losses in the billions. This week, we’re going to take a look at two cities where experimental solutions to traffic have cropped up. Aya Lowe (@AyaloweCNA) reports from the Philippine capital Manila, where startups are building dorms...
Duration:00:13:25
Branko Milanović on Global Inequality: What Do We Do?
5/8/2018
We're back with more from Branko Milanović, professor at the City University of New York’s Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, and author of the book, "Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization." Last week, producer Meara Sharma talked with Milanović about the factors that have driven inequities among nations and societies for centuries. While the last two decades have seen, for the first time since the industrial revolution, a decline in global inequality, the...
Duration:00:20:14
Branko Milanović on Global Inequality: The Long View
5/1/2018
We talk a lot on this show about how economic developments in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are reshaping the global order. We’re also interested in another aspect of that story: the challenge of income inequality in the emerging world. Branko Milanović (@BrankoMilan) is a rockstar in the field of income inequality. He’s a professor at the City University of New York’s Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, and his most recent book is Global Inequality: A New Approach...
Duration:00:28:27
An Ancient Islamic Toothbrush Goes Millennial
4/17/2018
The global Islamic economy - comprised of products and services that embody Islamic ethics - is a multi-trillion dollar industry. But Islamically-branded products are often seen as traditional rather than hip and cutting-edge. This week, Rabiya Jaffery of the podcast Kerning Cultures (@kerningcultures) brings us a story of a new company that is trying to shift that perception, by reimagining an ancient Muslim toothbrushing tradition for today’s youth.
Duration:00:11:27
In Brazil and India, Turning Trash into a Resource
4/3/2018
As countries move up the development spectrum, they tend to produce more trash, and across the emerging world, governments are struggling to keep up. The result is serious environmental and health hazards that often reinforce pre-existing inequalities. On this episode, we’ll hear about efforts to deal with waste in Brazil and India, two countries where rapid urbanization and industrialization has made trash a pressing problem. Zoe Sullivan (@zoesullnews) reports on a favela in Rio de Janeiro...
Duration:00:29:17
Pakistani Cinema's New Wave
3/20/2018
Pakistani cinema is going through a renaissance. After years of authoritarian policies that stifled the film industry, the country is producing more movies than it has in decades. We talk with journalist Samira Shackle (@samirashackle) about the history of Pakistani cinema and the new wave of films that are tackling subjects like radicalization and gender politics in groundbreaking ways. Plus, a conversation with acclaimed Pakistani actor, director, and producer Adnan Malik (@adnanmalik). He...
Duration:00:38:49
Argentine Wine Needs a Revolution
3/6/2018
Argentina has a rich tradition of winemaking that dates back nearly 500 years. But today, the country's famous wine industry is in crisis, thanks to a complex array of factors – including bad weather, price volatility, and the rise of craft beer. This week, reporter Frederick Bernas (@frederickbernas) tells us about the challenges plaguing Argentine wine, and what producers are doing to breathe new life into the beverage. You can read more about the Argentine wine industry in Frederick's...
Duration:00:10:18
85% Extra: The Filipino Middle Class in the Gulf
2/22/2018
The rise of the global middle class is a central component of the emerging market narrative. In Asia, the middle class consumer is one of the most powerful economic drivers of the future. By 2030, according to some estimates, Asia will host nearly two-thirds of the global middle class, and this group will account for 40% of global consumption. But what about the middle class in the Arabian Gulf countries? In places like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, expatriate communities have...
Duration:00:10:58
Cape Town's Water Reckoning
2/20/2018
Cape Town, South Africa is in the throes of an epic water crisis. Severe drought, population growth, overconsumption, poor infrastructure, and years of mismanagement have depleted the water supply, and the city is fast approaching "Day Zero," the day people's taps will be turned off. Emerge85 editor-in-chief Joseph Dana (@ibnezra), who recently moved to Cape Town, reflects on life in a city on the brink of running out of water, and visits a spring where an informal economy and community has...
Duration:00:27:19
How Pollution is a Drag on Development
2/7/2018
From Lahore and Delhi to Hanoi and Guangzhou, the most polluted cities on earth are in the 85 world. On this episode, we consider how the problem of pollution looms over the world's fastest-growing places, damaging both public health and economic development. First, journalist Pia Heikkila (@piaheikkila) reports from Delhi, where consistently hazardous levels of smog have given rise to a new anti-pollution industry. Then, we talk with Urvashi Narain, a senior environmental economist at the...
Duration:00:32:43
NAFTA: The View From Mexico
1/23/2018
This week, Canada, Mexico, and the United States begin yet another round of talks about the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement – what President Donald Trump has deemed "the worst trade deal in history." On this episode of the podcast, we focus on NAFTA from Mexico's perspective: how it has affected the country, and what's at stake if it collapses. First, reporter Maya Kroth (@theemaya) brings us a story about a craft beer brewer in Tijuana whose success depends upon a free...
Duration:00:36:39
Saudi Arabia and the Future of the Regional Order
1/2/2018
Saudi Arabia is in a moment of profound transformation. From allowing women to drive to rounding up prominent businessmen at Riyadh's Ritz Carlton, the actions of the royal family - driven by crown prince Mohammad bin Salman - captured the world's attention in 2017, and will only continue to do so in the year ahead. In this special edition of the podcast recorded in Abu Dhabi at The National newspaper, we consider the changes unfolding in Saudi Arabia from a regional perspective. In...
Duration:00:31:18