Partnership Vital to African Innovation
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa is the lack of access to funding. It seems innovators cannot find investors and investors cannot find innovators. We have to bridge this gap. The Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) is a platform that addresses this challenge by identifying innovators, rewarding them, assessing their […]
Going About the Business of Creating Social Change
There’s an inescapable buzz around the role of business in international development. Everywhere I go—from Bangladesh to East Africa, from the flurry of activity of the UNGA or CGI in New York to the WEF Annual meeting in Davos—it’s a topic that has risen to the very top of the development agenda. To be clear, […]
How to Change the Way the World is Fed?
As we mark World Food Day this week, we are greeted by the news that 842 million people – about one in eight – are still chronically hungry. Although this represents an improvement on the figures from previous years, it is not enough, and it looks like we are at risk of missing the Millennium […]
Partnerships: The Best Hope of Transforming the Future
Many companies, like those who attended the recent event in New York (watch the video below) on “A New Global Partnership with Business”, are actively thinking about their role in helping deliver the Post-2015 sustainable development agenda. And that contribution is huge. In his speech to the General Assembly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, recognized […]
Keeping Our Promise to Every Woman, Every Child
Each of us has felt the sting of a broken promise, most likely in our early childhood. The lesson leaves a lasting impression, teaching us that when we make a promise, we must honor it. The launch of Every Woman, Every Child by the United Nations three years ago sparked a series of promises to […]
Building Partnering Capacity: Investing in Success
If you ask a room full of people to rate how good they are at partnering, the chances are that most will rate themselves very highly. After all, it’s a natural human instinct, isn’t it? We do it all the time in our personal relationships, with our colleagues at work, in sports teams. From The […]
Save the Children Looks to Scale Up its Business Partnerships
Save The Children has had a long standing relationship with a number of corporates since its inception. Historically that relationship was predominately a traditional CSR relationship where businesses gave us a grant to either to contribute to our core costs as an organisation, or to implement a project in a specific country around health, education, […]
Is Your Organisation Fit to Partner?
Solving today’s complex sustainable development challenges requires multi-sector collaboration and an all-of-society approach. However, whilst such shared value partnerships (simultaneously achieving business and societal benefits) are often hailed as “the answer,” practitioners can find them challenging and at times frustrating. One of the most widespread hidden barriers is a lack of internal institutional capacity for […]
iDE and innocent foundation: Creating successful NGO-Business Partnerships
Since 2006 non-profit organisation iDE UK and the innocent foundation have achieved a major impact in some of the world’s poorest communities in Africa and Asia. They have found new, innovative ways to create shared value that can offer insights into creating successful partnerships between NGOs and the business world. Creating shared value starts with […]
Innovation Through Collaboration
A silo-buster is an innovator who refuses to allow a good idea to be pigeon-holed. Rather than being compartmentalized by the customary way of doing things, they break through corporate, academic, or societal categories, calling on a host of different disciplines and departments to take the next step. But innovation is only a first step […]
Best Practices from a Small Nonprofit on the Big CSR Trend
Can tea and running shoes help the poorest of the poor? Well, no. Not exactly. But if you put corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the mix, you have a recipe for a unique business strategy that supports sustainable development. Trickle Up, a U.S.-based, nonprofit, global poverty alleviation organization focused on helping the poorest of the […]
MY World Citizens: Technology and a Revolution in Global Policymaking
Since they were adopted by all UN Member States in the year 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have made a huge difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. The MDGs have helped to define a truly global agenda in the fight against poverty and have also provided a clear frame […]
Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights – the experience of Anglo American
Interview of Jan Klawitter, Government Relations Manager at Anglo American by Luke Wilde, Director of twentyfifty The mining multinational Anglo American and its record in contributing to social and economic development will be well known to regular readers of Business Fights Poverty. In June 2012 on this site, then CEO Cynthia Carroll reported on the […]
The Bigger Picture of Youth Economic Opportunity
Youth unemployment has taken center stage in global economic policy – and with good reason. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has put jobless youth at a minimum of 75 million worldwide, with young people unemployed at twice or even thrice the global adult unemployment rate. Yet, while job creation is indeed critical, generating widespread economic […]
The Private Sector and Fragile States
The development conundrum facing the international community in the 21st century is the increasing number and persistence of fragile and conflict affected states. There are almost 50 fragile and conflict affected states in the world today. They are characterized by persistent conflict, poor governance, weak institutions, widespread corruption, lack of legitimacy, the inability to provide […]
Business Engagement in Fighting Rural Hunger and Poverty
Government assistance is simply not enough to tackle rural poverty. The U.S. food security program, Feed the Future, is a relatively new effort to target key countries and communities to promote food security. It is vitally important and has been carefully-designed and implemented. Feed the Future is focused on 19 countries; but food security and […]
Trade and Investment for Development
Trade and investment are increasingly important tools for international development. Market openness is a critical factor in promoting growth, and openness to trade raises national incomes. If done properly, trade can have significant development impacts for national governments, small producers, and individuals. Yet U.S. policy for trade, investment, and development is seen as separate rather […]
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals?
What is the role of business in delivering on the post-2015 development goals? This was the question I was asked to address on a panel at the EU High-Level Conference on Education and Development on 23 May, aimed at strengthening the momentum for education as the foundation for a new international development framework. The panel […]
The Niger Delta Partnership Initiative: Corporate Social Enterprise in Action
All too often corporate social responsibility has, over the years, meant occasional grants and handouts to people in need, with little regard to achieving sustainable development in the long run. Things are changing. As governments struggle with tight budgets, and business leaders discover the dangers of operating in volatile regions of the world where residents […]
The Private Sector as the Driver of Development
Nine out of ten jobs in the developing world are in the private sector. Hum-drum enough, but for the development community this is something of an epoch. There is a growing consensus in international development that the private sector is the engine of development and donors and development stakeholders should design and plan around this […]