A Call for More Entrepreneurs to Focus on Toilets
Entrepreneurs are everywhere these days, not just in the purely for-profit world but also those looking to create social, as well as financial, gain. As the international development community grows, entrepreneurial thinking is becoming ever more mainstream, with social enterprises demonstrating how to create businesses that deliver social benefit. As Naveen Jain, technology and spacecraft […]
How Do You Incentivise More Businesses to Operate More Responsibly?
Last week I joined Chatham House at their Responsible Business Conference, alongside representatives from across the public, private and NGO sectors, including Vodafone, Nestle, the UN Global Compact and the UK Minister for Corporate Responsibility. Together we considered a broad range of questions, starting with: How do you incentivise more businesses to operate more responsibly? […]
Breakthroughs in Fertilizer Can Unlock the Riches in the Soil
Throughout history, the relationship between a farmer and his land has been symbiotic. As long ago as 6,000BC, Neolithic smallholders in Europe used nitrogen-rich manure to maintain the soil’s fertility, understanding that the land provides but it must also be “fed”. Later, soil health became so important that countries were prepared to go to war […]
World AIDS Day 2016: Thoughts from Mark Cutifani
By Mark Cutifani, CEO, Anglo American This World AIDS Day, Mark Cutifani reflects on the HIV/AIDS work Anglo American currently conducts and the role that partnerships can play in ending the epidemic. “I know my status, my family loves me, and I am living my life. What has been created here by Anglo American is […]
What Does “Good” Look Like for Companies Trying to Address Modern Slavery?
As the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights opens today in Geneva, Quintin Lake, Research Fellow at Hult International Business School, discusses modern slavery. Addressing modern slavery is becoming a business-critical for companies – for credibility with customers, investors, NGOs and the public – according to new research by Hult International Business School and […]
A Conversation with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Internationally recognized development economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala served as Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and twice as Nigeria’s Finance Minister — the first woman to hold either post. She has held several key positions at the World Bank, and in 2014, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Currently, […]
2016: No More Business as Usual
One of the many factors in the election of Donald Trump as US President was a rejection of the status quo. In response, we need to re-think business, with human rights at the forefront. In September, US President Obama called in an address to the UN General Assembly for a different path from “soulless capitalism […]
Business Must Stand Up as a Champion of Progressive Values
Recent events in the US and UK have reminded me of a love story. When I was 12, I vividly remember my grandmother telling me the story of how in her early 20s she met and fell in love with my grandfather. But theirs was no ordinary love story. You see, she was an Anglo-Irish […]
Investing in Malawi’s Power Sector
MCC’s $350.7 million compact with Malawi, signed in 2011, is designed to revitalize the country’s power sector to improve the availability, reliability and quality of the power supply and promote economic growth. MCC is investing in infrastructure to increase the capacity of Malawi’s electrical grid while also working with the Government of Malawi and the […]
The Social Enterprise Landscape: Good News First or Bad?
What Role Can Business Play in the Pursuit of Peace? Summary Thoughts
Business Fights Poverty hosted a month-long conference on the topic of the role businesses can play in the pursuit of peace. A subject little discussed twenty years ago, this has become a vibrant topic and the October event was a time and place to pause and reflect on this question. The conference welcomed those who […]
How Africa Can Restore Robust Growth Through Trade and Aid
The narrative of “Africa Rising” has recently been tempered by uncertainties and risks in the global environment. Following two decades of growth averaging five percent, many of Africa’s economies, especially the commodity exporters, have cooled. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund cut its 2016 growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa to only 1.4 percent. Like […]
Poverty Footprint: A Unique Tool to Assess Business Impacts on Sustainable Development
By Ursula Wynhoven, Chief, Social Sustainability, Governance & Legal, UN Global Compact and Helen Van Hoeven, Deputy Director, Private Sector Department, Oxfam America As engines of economic growth, global companies have wide-ranging opportunities to positively affect the lives of the poor. Yet, company impacts on people living in poverty are largely not understood and under-reported. […]
Sharing Responsibility for Antimicrobial Resistance
With the release in May of the final report and recommendations of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, GBCHealth has convened a group of global leaders to discuss the potential impact of AMR and their priorities for immediate action. The #GBCtalksAMR series, which will be published over the next three weeks is intended to supplement the […]
The Peace Attributes of Companies (PACO) index
Given the growth and maturity of the field of business and peace, in this article we call for the creation of an index that would present a scorecard of company behaviors. We call this the PACO index, which is an acronym for Peaceful Attributes of Companies and is the word for peace in Esperanto. We […]
Operationalizing Peace through Commerce
Most scholars would agree that the goal of business is to create value. Yet, can there be anything more valuable than peace? My article tackles the following research question: How can, or do, businesses advance peace? It explains why peace through commerce is a topic worthy of study and sets out an empirical approach to […]
Can and should enlightened global businesses solve real global problems like war and poverty?
World headlines show the global community is faced with serious problems of conflict and instability: 10,000 or more deaths per year from the Mexican Drug War, Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Insurgency, and ethnic violence in South Sudan. 1,000-9,999 deaths per year in Gaza and from civil wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Northwest Pakistan, Egypt, and […]
Employers are Getting Graduates Job-ready in Africa
It is widely recognised that long-term economic growth can only be achieved through investment in a highly skilled workforce, and more than three-quarters of CEOs in Africa believe a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce should be a priority for business.[1] However, employers across the region complain of a lack of basic, technical and transferable skills […]
U.S. Technology Companies, Sovereign States, and the Battle Over Data Protection
Who owns an individual’s electronic communications data, who should have access to it, and what can be done with it? The battle of privacy versus security is currently raging between U.S. technology companies and national security forces. U.S. technology companies are adopting corporate foreign policies to respond to sovereign states’ efforts to access customer data, […]
Collaborating Across Sectors to Further Global Health
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 specific goals, and 169 associated targets that set out quantitative objectives across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, all to be achieved by 2030 (United Nations, 2015). Health has been recognized as crucial for sustainable human development (Alleyne et al., 2013) and an essential contributor […]