By Abubakar Usman Abubakar
In our recent cloud meetings and many other face to face interaction with many world leaders, we have agreed that Heads of State can learn a lot about practical issues, about what can be implemented, when they hear opinions from business leaders. In order to have progress made, we need to have this interaction between business leaders and political leaders on a much larger scale.
Governments need to listen to entrepreneurs that have no agenda to enrich only themselves while starving their workers. This thing that we do starved workers, we need an advance society. Confucius once said; “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
Although many people may not be officially employed in developing countries, most find work in the informal sector, whether in unregistered businesses, street selling or as servants. Working hours may extend to 10-15 per day, 6 or 7 days per week, for which they are underpaid.
In my opinion, our stumbling debts in most African countries and most part of the world as well as economic stumbling block are due to a large part of exceptionally educated elected leaders and government officials making financial decisions with little or without any experience and indoctrination on the theme of money or economic transition. I once wrote an article about the place of culture in civilization and stated why the French, the Japanese and others that value culture are winning. The more we live in the hyper-present, the more we need culture. Culture is about bridging differences. We all know in the most difficult times of our lives, of our societies, that we need to let culture speak.
Hence, there is need for much more public-private partnership [PPP] not just for large industries or capital project but Small and Medium Enterprises; SMEs. The idea of public-private partnership is not new. I think that what has changed more recently is the speed and the impact that the partnership will have.
Governments are making big mistakes when it comes to PPP; they think all they need is the big companies and financial corporations, forgetting that SMEs drive every economy. SMEs doesn’t need only loans, they also need to partner with governments. Governments just need to check the SMEs track records very well and then select the opportunities they can utilize.
Furthermore, we have to be seeing three main global concerns: a slow down of economies across the world, the disruption of technology, and increased awareness about climate change. These are really the three main themes that come out of our discussions with the world leaders that we have internally and with our partners across the world. The size of the problem is always equal to the size of the opportunity, and the climate problem is enormous. Money talks and it speaks green. The climate solutions are going to create the largest asset class in the history of the world.