A Safer Workplace For All: Business Takes the Lead
WBCSD Pledge inspires a global movement towards water, sanitation and hygiene Imagine that you are a coal miner working 100m underground in East India. You are on the sixth hour of your shift, covered in rocks and soot, and you need to go to the bathroom. Finding a safe and sustainable solution to meet the […]
The Business Case for Sharing the Global Water Bill
By 2030, the world will look back on the past 15 years with a sense of achievement, or lament a missed opportunity. The ambitious and transformational development agenda[1] due to be approved at the UN Summit in September[2] is setting the bar high, and there are similarly high expectations for the Financing for Development meeting […]
The Role of Water Stewardship in Supporting the SDGs
There is a strong level of ambition for the post 2015 Development Agenda. It’s recognised that the challenges affecting people, the planet and prosperity are interrelated and call for integrated solutions. Bold, transformative steps and collective action are needed to deliver the SDGs and shift the world to a sustainable path. Water provides a perfect […]
A Call for Activism Around the SDGs at WEF Africa
“The generations to come will never forgive us if we fail to take responsibility.” This was the message shared passionately by Graça Machel during an event entitled Survive, Thrive, Transform: Ensuring Citizen Engagement in the Sustainable Development Goals held on Friday 5 June alongside side the WEF Africa Forum in Cape Town. Co-convened by the […]
Post-2015 Development Agenda: Platforms for Partnership
This September, world leaders will adopt a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the year 2030. Reaching these ambitious goals will require multi-stakeholder partnerships between business, NGO, government, the UN and communities to function at a scale and quality that dwarf current efforts. The question of how countries can systematically […]
Power Africa Partnerships for Development
It is clear that Africa has a very large shortfall in its power infrastructure. Although the continent accounts for a sixth of the world’s population, it generates only 4 per cent of its electricity. As many as 600 million people are without electricity, and 30 countries face routine power shortages. This has a huge impact […]
Developing Sustainable Power Projects
When you look at infrastructure investments in Africa, it seems that you often see this phenomenon – the London Bus Syndrome. You wait half an hour for a bus, then three come along at once. Things come together – the financial markets are more receptive, governments move forward on projects and suddenly everything is moving. […]
Closing Africa’s Energy Gap
The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. In two-thirds of sub-Saharan African countries, less than 50 per cent of the population has access to power, while the average energy consumption per capita of the region is not enough to continuously power a single 50-watt lightbulb. […]
Making Collective Governance Work
Collective governance In a world characterised by globalisation, governments increasingly find themselves unable to govern. Corruption is everywhere, natural resources are being exploited, the environment damaged, markets distorted, and the fight against poverty is often ineffective. Certain challenges cannot be addressed by governments alone. Increasingly, collective governance “beyond governments” is seen as part of the […]
The Finalists: Unilever Global Development Award
The Unilever Global Development Award supported by Business Fights Poverty, identifies business programmes that are demonstrating a positive impact in addressing global poverty as captured in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Addressing these challenges is vital to achieving the transformative change needed to create a fairer society and a more sustainable future for all. […]
Attracting African Capital to Invest in African SMEs
Cameroun Breuvages, Cameroon, Photo Credit: © Bechir Malum What does it take to finance early-stage Small and Growing Businesses in Africa? A new handbook shares the experience of African investors, and shows how building local ecosystems and attracting African capital will enable the growth of the sector. Investing in Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) in […]
Creating Business Value and Development Impact in WASH
This leadership perspective is part of a series on the theme of creating business value and development impact in the WASH sector. The series and accompanying discussion paper are co-produced by Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor and Business Fights Poverty. This week we’ll be running a series of leadership perspectives on the theme […]
Three Ways to Strengthen Healthcare Systems
The Ebola outbreak exposed what we have all known for many years – healthcare systems in the poorest countries are chronically underfunded, under-resourced and fragmented. This leaves them ill-equipped to deal with everyday challenges like malaria and diarrhoea – that claim hundreds of thousands of children’s lives each year – let alone public health crises […]
Corporations Supporting Women’s Economic Progress
The past month has seen multiple global events commemorating International Women’s Day, including CCC’s stellar collaboration with the UN Office of Partnerships and UN Women, The Empowerment Bridge: Building a Lifetime of Opportunity for Wome… These events have emphasized some common points: though the world has seen much progress for women and girls in the […]
Economically Empowering Women Through The SDGs
The real challenge for the new Sustainable Development Goals is what happens after they are agreed. Deciding on the goals and targets is only the first step; backing them up with the commitment to implement them is crucial. The emerging consensus between the private sector, civil society, governments and multilateral agencies on the need for […]
Together, To Get Every Child Learning
The single most important contribution that Pearson can make to society is to equip people with the skills they need to progress in life and work. But every day, millions of children miss out on the opportunity to attend school and to learn those skills. Half of all out-of-school children live in countries affected by […]
Intel's Global Women and Girls Initiative
Suzanne Fallender, Director, Global Women and Girls Initiative, Intel speaking at this year’s International Women’s Day Forum In mid-April, CCC and the Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative released A Path to Empowerment: The role of corporations in supporting women…. The report, based on a series of invitation-only, high level roundtables, offers a three-pronged […]
Intel’s Global Women and Girls Initiative
Suzanne Fallender, Director, Global Women and Girls Initiative, Intel speaking at this year’s International Women’s Day Forum In mid-April, CCC and the Harvard Kennedy School Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative released A Path to Empowerment: The role of corporations in supporting women…. The report, based on a series of invitation-only, high level roundtables, offers a three-pronged […]
Government and Policy in Inclusive Business
I am returning to this topic because I think that any discussion of the role of government and policy in inclusive business will benefit from understanding better how IB contributes to a transformation in a specific market system, and indeed vice versa. While all market systems programmes do not involve innovation by an individual company […]
How Can Business Fight Ebola? Beyond “Gift-in-Kind”
Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s Assistant Minister of Health stated recently: “We must use this momentum not just to get back to where we were, but to build up health systems to last beyond this crisis and into the next.” (Devex, 3 Pitfalls Ebola Recovery must avoid, May 2015). While there is need to see opportunities for […]