 As part of our ongoing effort to bring U.S. and African business voices to bear on development policy, IGD partnered with the Brookings Institution to convene a panel discussion on the crucial role that business plays in global development.
Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO Daniel Yohannes provided opening remarks emphasizing the MCC's commitment to leveraging private sector partnerships to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. Panelists shared their perspectives on investing in frontier markets and how government can catalyze enterprise growth and development.
Listen to an audio recording of the discussion.
Participants
Daniel Yohannes, CEO, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Justin Chinyanta, Chairman & CEO, Loita Capital Partners International LTD
Chad Holliday, Former Chairman & CEO, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
Tim Solso, Chairman & CEO, Cummins Inc.
Introduction
Jennifer Potter, President and CEO, Initiative for Global Development
Moderated by
Kemal Dervis, Vice President and Director, Global Economy and Development at Brookings
 Opening Remarks
"The private sector, after all, is the engine of innovation, job creation and growth."
Daniel Yohannes highlighted the MCC's work to reduce poverty through economic growth and commended the countries the MCC works with for working to replace aid dollars with investment dollars. Set against the context of the Obama administration's current review of U.S. development strategy, Yohannes provided several examples of MCC funding leveraging private sector investment. He explained that the MCC wants to "crowd in, not crowd out, the private sector."
Key Questions
Important questions that were addressed during the discussion:
What drives or prevents companies from investing in frontier markets?
What can the U.S. government do to mitigate risk or improve the climate for investment?
How can business and government help strengthen local businesses in developing countries?
Highlights
 Justin Chinyanta argued that both private investment and government assistance need to help create sustainable political systems in Africa, because good governance and accountability are necessary for broad based economic growth and development.
"What's different is that there are players who are now looking at the African continent as a very serious market in its own right."
Chad Holliday stressed the importance of partnering and achieving success on the ground in order to build confidence in the growth opportunities in frontier markets.
"Be sure you have people from the country to be able to cut through the chatter and to give advice."
 Tim Solso emphasized that investing in frontier markets takes patience and a long-term perspective and is therefore easier for companies that can rely on other, more mature areas of their operations for short-term profits while they are building the business elsewhere. He also argued that we should be clear about the reason companies go into developing country markets.
"Businesses go to developing countries and invest because they think they'll get a return on that investment; the outcomes of more employment, better education and economic development for those countries happen because the business is successful."
 In conjunction with the event, Brookings published a new paper by IGD Board member Robert Mosbacher, Jr. who was also in attendance. Read the paper here: A New Strategy To Leverage Business for International Development.
Event co-hosted by Global Economy and Development at Brookings. |
