October 21, 2021
Introduction
The session was an interactive roundup to discuss, collaborate and dig deeper into the various sessions that took place within the day from an academic lens. The Panel provided practical insights and highlighted salient points from the various themes debated earlier.
The Panellists emphasised that there is a need for the world to start thinking about how to deal with future pandemics. They mentioned that they can start doing this by developing policies and programmes to strengthen their resilience to such shocks. Africa, the worst hit by the pandemic ought to start thinking along these lines the most.
Session Highlights
The Panellists stated that in order to build resilience for future global shocks, all stakeholders, including government, Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) need to embrace global supply chains mechanism and not reject them, embrace international cooperation and technologies and build a globalised network of suppliers. They also encouraged businesses to build or adopt a system whereby in the likelihood of another pandemic they can rely on other supplier sources to keep their businesses afloat.
The Panellists mentioned that the pandemic has widened the inequality and gender biases gap, as resources are unevenly distributed among people. Issues of gender inequality have heightened, making achieving SDG 5 far-fetched. They advised that governments could develop a policy where firms that employ more women could enjoy some incentives like tax holidays.
The Panellists suggested that multinational enterprises could support government policies on sustainability and align their internal business governance activities to the direction of sustainability. Thus the thrust areas are significant reduction in carbon emission, environmental protection, preservation, green energy and making a conscious effort to adhere to government policies in these areas.
Panellists added that there is the need for collaboration between local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) operating in the same production value chain. These collaborations can take the form of capacity building in ICT and knowledge sharing exercises. In addition, Multinational Enterprises could source raw materials or other supplies from local suppliers to get them involved in the production process.
The Academia community was encouraged in SDGs and went beyond writing to collaborate with the right policymakers and international organisations like UNCTAD, World Bank, World Economic Forum, GIZ among others to make the change needed. They should engage in collaborative research and development projects to get the right information, make in-depth analysis and come up with practical solutions to inform policymakers on the right decisions to make.
On the panel were:
- Ari Van Assche, Full Professor
- Rob Grosse, Professor, Thunderbird School of Global Management