WEF Day four: Deadline day. Everyone’s exhausted and working to their absolute limits on the average of four and a half hours of sleep that participants seem to get according to a study done last year. The dwindling energy at the World Economic Forum is tangible, from the grumpy faces of security staff to participants, yet Alec seems to be on form, and still has his finger firmly on the pulse.
Alec was one of the ten lucky few to sit in the presence of Jim Yong Kim, however in a closed session. Other highlights included a CNBC interview with Prince Emmanuel from Belgium who has been running a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a chat with the head of the University of Hong Kong Jack Chan, platinum insights from Lonmin CEO Ben Magara, and an interview with Ruth Anne Renaud, the head of the Social Responsibility program in Davos this year. The project entails a step counter for each participant, and the cause? Walking for Africa. Every 6km walked by each participant will ensure the donation of one bicycle to South Africans in need; no greater incentive not to take the bus!
In the evening, Alec witnessed council with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, and was notably underwhelmed by the less-than-spectacular meeting in the otherwise incredibly high standard setting of the summit. Finally, Alec had a chat with South African Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel about SA development, and how we just haven’t found our growth strategy quite yet. What a day! – CH
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By Alec Hogg*
This Podcast was made possible by BrightRock, the company that introduced the first ever, needs-matched life insurance.
ALEC HOGG:  This is Alec Hogg coming to you from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Yes, Davos Diary Day 4 and in many ways, it’s the toughest day.
The media are starting to hit deadlines. I had quite a few myself this year, writing not just for Biznews but I did a piece for City Press, which will appear over the weekend, looking at how the South African delegation faired here. In addition, a piece for the Guardian who asked me to help them in certain respects. That’s The Guardian of London, so quite a big responsibility in addition to the CNBC interviews and so on. Deadline day is therefore not just for other people, which it always has been, but for me as well. In addition, you get the feeling that after four days of intense knowledge-gathering and all of these sessions that are going on all the time, that the security guys are starting to get grumpy, that the executives or the participants who were at the World Economic Forum are getting tired – perhaps a little bit too much partying.
There was a stat that was done last year where they analysed (though jawbones) how much sleep Davos attendants were getting and the average was around four-and-a-half hours per night. You have that for three nights and it doesn’t matter how much of a superman or a super-girl you are; you will start being affected. The WEF is coming to a close. We have an interesting day again tomorrow and I’ll be looking forward to this one too because there’s quite a lot of sessions that I’m hoping to get to as well as a few interviews but today, for me, was very special. It started off relatively early in the morning (9:00), which Davos time is pretty early, with an interview with Dr Jim Yong King. I say ‘an interview’. It’s an off-the-record session. There were ten of us engaging with the President of the World Bank and what an impressive man he is. It’s just a pity that on the one hand, it was off-the-record.
However, on the other hand if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have spoken anywhere as freely as he did. However, he did – in broad terms – say that the World Bank was being reassessed/restructured. When he got there, he found things that he wasn’t that excited about. He found a new strategy (a new way of delivery) and has been working on delivering knowledge, because that’s what the World Bank has in abundance, rather than capital. Most of those who need the World Bank’s assistance around the world say ‘give us your learnings. Help us to understand better’ and he’s had some great successes already. He was telling us that by engaging with leaders, those leaders in particular who want to work with the World Bank have been benefitting. I’m not going to go any further into what was said there because it was off-the-record.
Also interview-wise, but these were very much on the record, were my final crossings into Power Lunch at CNBC Africa and a fascinating man by the name of Prince Emmanuel was one of the interviewees today. He runs a national park in the DRC and the full interview is on Biznews. In brief, this is a man who is a Prince in Belgium, has decided to spend his life in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which Belgium clearly, has links with. It used to be Belgian colony. More than that, he has dedicated his existence to helping to protect a national park where there was an assassination attempt on his life in April last year and no less than 140 of his game rangers have been executed/murdered (call it what you like) in trying to do their jobs of protecting the game in the park. These are the real heroes, the unsung ones, who don’t get much of an audience except in a place like Davos.
I also had a wonderful discussion with Jack Chan who is the head of the University of Hong Kong. He had just come from a session with Jack Ma, one of the great entrepreneurs in China and being celebrated here as the man who’s behind Alibaba.com. It was interesting, talking to Jack Chan about the way the Chinese entrepreneurs are taking the world by storm, particularly in the Internet space. He had a few things to say about Tony Ma as well – the head of Tencent. Again, you can go and pick up those interviews for more detail. He is a charming man and very flamboyant in his dress – relatively speaking – for a university professor. He walks around with a cap on his head, so he’s very easy to spot although he’s (as you’d say in polite English) vertically challenged.
On to interviews for Biznews. We had Ben Magara popping around to have a chat with us. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of
exciting news here for Ben about the platinum price, but as a Davos virgin – first time here – he was bowled over and I’m sure he’s going to be back again next year. Also, on a South African note, we got to chat with Ruth-Anne Renaud. She’s the lady behind the social responsibility program that is being driven through Davos this year. When we arrived, we were asked if we wanted to put bangles with an electronic chip around our wrists and that measures how much we walk. The idea is for every six kilometres that somebody walks, a bicycle will be donated to a child in rural South Africa. Of course, this piqued my interest. I’ve been trying to walk a little bit further than normal and hopefully; we can end up with a couple of bicycles that are given to children in South Africa due to our decision here not to take the bus, but to walk a little more. It was a really interesting interview, again, also on Biznews.
This evening was spent with very good friends at a local restaurant. We’re kind of running out of steam as well, but that was not before I went to a final engagement of the medial council for today. This time, the Prime Minister was Stefan Lofven, who’s the head of the Swedish government. He’s one of the less impressive of the Prime Ministers that we’ve been exposed to so far. I was bowled over by his counterpart in Finland and very impressed by the Ukrainian President and the Italian Prime Minister. Of course, as you heard earlier, it really was a privilege to be in the company of Dr Jim Yong Kim, Head of the World Bank. Mr Lofven is an ex-trade unionist. He’s bringing in even more socialist policies to Sweden and it seems that the most important thing in his life is to get Sweden on as a member of the United Nations Security Council.
Why Sweden, a small country with limited resources and very few people who are pretty well off would want to get onto the U.N. Security Council is something that only the Swedes can tell us. When you consider that, they have a fraction of the global population then surely, in a case like this, you would be thinking that bigger countries with greater representation would be automatic entrants onto the U.N. Security Council. Be that as it may, Mr Lofven then also made the ultimate mistake in a conference of media leaders by answering a question in Swedish, from a Swedish journalist, in Swedish. He prattled on for about two-and-a-half minutes while only he and this journalist he was talking to, knew what the devil they were on about. It was a little disappointing. There was no transcription service. He arrived late – about 15 minutes late – and left, pretty much
on time so a thoroughly disappointing engagement when you consider how many good ones we’ve had in the past.
I don’t know if Sweden is terribly blessed at this point with it’s leadership. They’re certainly not as blessed as one sees in some other countries of the world and that’s the wonderful part about being in Davos. You get to compare. You get to see them walking past you, almost as if you’re at a horse sale and you’re thinking of buying a yearling or a two-year-old horse. When you walk past, you can see the good ones from the bad ones quite easily. It’s a similar thing here in Davos. You experience the greatest (and maybe not as great) experience and the standards here are very high – something that South Africa’s learning and something that we discussed as well, with the Minister of Economic Development, Ebrahim Patel who had a brief chat to us on our Biznews television service. We’ll get that up onto the site tomorrow. Very interesting insights there, not least that he believes that after 20 years of democracy, South Africa’s actually done relatively well if you consider other countries, but that we haven’t quite found our growth strategy just yet. I found that interesting.
This is Alec Hogg at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
This Podcast was made possible by BrightRock, the company that introduced the first ever, needs-matched life insurance.
