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Building a common future with business

Date
Time (GMT +01) 16:30 18:45

Speakers:

Mike Foster - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DFID
Jane Nelson - Director of the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Harvard University

Gareth Penny - Chief Executive, De Beers Group
David Randall - Supply Director, Diageo Africa

Chair:

Simon Maxwell - Senior Research Associate, ODI

Description

This final event in the series aims to reflect on the lessons learned and the opportunities identified during the course of the nine-event series, and to look at how business, government and civil society can address them.   The meeting will also reflect on the UK Government’s White Paper on International Development: “Building our Common Future”, and consider how the key development challenges identified in the Paper will influence the business and international development agenda beyond 2009.

As the world starts to emerge from the down-turn, is there an opportunity to create a step change in the way the private sector and international development community collaborates to achieve more resilient and transformative growth, and do we need to create new and better mechanisms and frameworks to deliver this change? 

At a broad level, a central question for governments and donors is how to create the appropriate incentive framework to facilitate further innovation in inclusive business. Where do constraints need to be removed, should direct incentives be provided, and what forms of part­nerships can work?

More specifically, can donors and the private sector identify more creative and flexible ways to leverage sources of finance to support and fast track promising new business models?    How can governments and the private sector work better together to better manage and mitigate the financial risks?  What more can be done to align public policy and private resources and expertise to strengthen local innovation and better support small and medium sized enterprises?    Where does the role of business in contributing to global public goods begin and end?