With less than one year to go until the adoption of a new global development agenda, an event was held in London in December focusing on the practicalities of how best to deliver the new framework and SDG priorities. Although responsibility for implementation will ultimately fall to national governments, it is now recognised that the challenges are too great and too systemic for any one sector to tackle alone. As a result, the mainstreaming of multi-stakeholder partnerships in to development policy and practice is being emphasised.
Across the business community, there is a growing appreciation of the need not only to harness the core business to maximise development impact, but also to strengthen the underlying systems that impact the strategic context for business, whether this be infrastructure, health, food and education systems, or the natural environment.
This event marked the launch of a new report which analyses a wide range of business partnerships in Africa to identify key barriers and enablers for achieving sustainable impact at scale, alongside considerations for policy makers and businesses as they address the means of implementation for the SDGs.
Panellists included:
- David Kennedy, Director General, Economic Development, DFID
- Laurie Lee, CEO, Care International UK
- Michael Alexander, Head of Water, Environment, Agriculture Sustainability, Diageo
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Christèle Delbé, Head of Sustainability for Enterprise, Vodafone Group
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Louise James, Managing Director, Accenture Development Partnerships
The event was chaired by Graham Baxter, Senior Adviser at Business Fights Poverty. The event was sponsored by Shell.
