LONDON — For the past eight years, head of Africa for the World Economic Forum, Tanzanian Elsie Kanza has ensured the often forgotten continent enjoys the attention its billion people deserve. As she geared up for her busiest week of the year, I tapped her for some thoughts on the Africa agenda of Davos 2019. Appropriately, we kicked off with the WEF’s annual Global Risks report, released this week, which highlights how climate change has taken a firm grip – these rising temperatures have been playing havoc with Africa’s opportunities to leapfrog. – Alec Hogg
Davos 2019, this coverage of the global conversation on change is brought to you by BrightRock, the first ever needs matched life insurance that changes as your life changes. In this episode an Insider’s Track on the Africa Agenda in Davos.
For the past eight-years head of Africa for the World Economic Forum (WEF) Tanzanian Elsie Kanza, has insured the often-forgotten Continent enjoys the attention, it’s billion people deserves. As she gears up for her busiest week of the year, I tapped her for some thoughts on the Africa Agenda of Davos 2019. Appropriately, we started off by having a look at the WEF’s annual Global Risks Report, which was released this week. It highlights how climate change has now taken a firm grip on the world with rising temperatures playing havoc all over the globe, but in particular, with Africa’s opportunities to leapfrog.
We have been surprised as well at how much environmental risks dominated the results of the annual global risks perception survey this year. For instance, they accounted for three of the top five risks by likelihood, and four by impact. So, it’s clear that many of the disasters in the last year, albeit floods or fires, or earthquakes have clearly raised the level of the challenges that we’re facing. Complimenting that is also concerns around, for example, how plastics are destroying our oceans and during the SDI Summit we saw a coalition emerge of key leaders from around the world rallying to essentially marshal their forces collectively, to move faster, so a key message with respect to the environment is that it’s not an immediate time challenge but it is a long term challenge that we need to prepare for with more urgency.
Is it for the last four-years we’ve had record temperatures around the world?
That is true, yes, and the situation seems to be worsening in terms of the increased incidents of such events.
Now, Africa is a dry Continent in many parts anyway. Is it being more adversely affected by all these risks, these climate change risks, that are now being increasingly highlighted?
What we see with respect to Africa is the impact, the lasting effects of the aftermath and the ability to respond to the crisis, as well as to restore resilience is much lower than the rest of the world, on average. At the same time, for example with the water crisis in Cape Town, we’re also seeing the emergence of new solutions and new thinking, in terms of how to address that challenge. The issue of shortages of water is not unique to South Africa, it’s something that’s suddenly impacting other parts of the world. But the particular case in SA has led to the emergence of quite a few new solutions so, one of the things that the forum is facilitating or enabling is being able to share much more rapidly how different countries or stakeholders can respond to their challenges so, how can we learn faster from each other. It’s also commendable to see how the world rallied in the case of Thailand so, how can we have more, or establish new models of cooperation, where different experts or people who can address challenges from around the world can rally together when a problem emerges.
There’s a wonderful African saying that when the elephants fight the grass gets trampled. We’ve got USA and China, seemingly at each other’s throats. What happens to a Continent that only makes up about 3.5% of global GDP, yet 12% of the population? Does it sit there, maybe becoming more attractive or is it like the grass that gets trampled?
Good question, and the good news is we’re going to actually have conversations about that in Davos. So, it’s a good opportunity to share at least two highlights, with respect to your question. One is a conversation about the single market, the Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. So, one way to address the battle of the elephants is to collaborate, is to be an elephant, so to speak. So, there’s more power in the collective than in the individual countries. The second discussion and focus is around what these new forms of cooperation, or not, mean because the battle undermines the effectiveness of the Free Trade Area, for example. But mostly, the world still needs it. Africa being a casing point, as a Continent that benefits from having a rules-based system. At the same time, we’re also seeing new emerging partnerships so, whether it’s the China/Africa or Turkey/Africa, or Europe/Africa – different parts of the world are also engaging with the Continent in different ways and one of the questions that our leaders will be grappling with is, is Africa responding effectively and can it?
There’s quite a bit of scepticism also around the ability to achieve this single market vision given that the regional economic blocks are not faring or living up to their promise as single blocks. So, there’s a need to, one, get clarity around how the existing gaps in terms of Africa’s efforts to create unity and therefore, be a much more powerful voice. Hopefully, expand its share of the global markets, is critical. There are also rules that prevent Africa from expanding so, it’s important also to have that block and to have a clear position about how Africa is going to negotiate this new global reality, in order to benefit from it rather than to lose from it.
Well, I know you look after all the delegations from the Continent. This year SA seems to have, by my calculations, the most powerful group of leaders that it’s ever had. Also, with quite a few WEF veterans coming along to it. Cyril Ramaphosa was fairly popular last year as a deputy president or a president in waiting, is his agenda going to be even fuller this time around?
Agendas are always full. The question is, what is visible to the general public and what is more closed door? Not many people are aware of many of the conversations that take place behind closed doors, and there SA is very active because, as you know, they still have the investment challenge to meet so, it’s important to continue to, one, just keep everyone updated about the progress that’s being made on the reforms and the commitments that have been taken so far. Then two, to also really reach out and share more about the opportunities in the country. A lot of confidence building and therefore, Team SA, in here include the business community, which is very important. Business tends to listen more to business than to politicians. So far, there’s a lot of excitement and SA remains important. It’s our biggest community in Africa. The world is still very excited – we have a special session just focussed on SA, which we hold every year. It’s always oversubscribed, and that’s not different this time around. There are many people still committed, highly committed, to SA and to seeing SA succeed.
When you say, ‘a special session,’ who comes along to that?
These are what we call our country strategy dialogues so, it’s very much a conversation between the government and the business community so, local, regional and international. It’s in the spirit of cooperation, both have influence in terms of being able to drive transformation so, be it from a policy perspective and governance perspective. The second is from an investment perspective, and therefore the objective is really to facilitate more frank conversations about how to improve collaboration and partnership between the two parties. While also recognising that they have different bottom lines, with respect to who they are accountable to. But it’s important that they work together and that’s the spirit that the forum seeks to promote.
You say, ‘frank conversations.’ You’re obviously in the room where we journalists are not allowed but does it get heated sometimes?
Absolutely, which is why the journalists are not in the room because people tend to be shy if they can be quoted. So, certain house rules apply. Again, the spirit is to move the needle forward and very often that requires more truth to be shared in both directions.
The thing that always excites me about the WEF and Davos is the connections that are made, which you don’t always see the consequences of but it’s a trusting environment. It’s an environment, which is pretty much people who might have been in ivory towers for most of their existence, get out into the savanna and they engage as human beings again. And because you’ve been looking after the African team now, well you can tell us how many years, but do you see that those connections get closer?
Yes, I’m in my eighth year at the Forum. From time to time you hear really, heart-warming stories, which is why we keep going. So, one example, which is a great success story of how effective, well organised, and prepared participation in the Forum meetings and particularly in Davos can be, is Rwanda. Whereby the minister for agriculture met one of our partners, at the executive level, as you maybe are aware for many of the multi-national companies’ strategic decisions are taken at the global level and Royal DSM was looking to expand their factories for producing some of their products and they didn’t have a plant in Africa. So, somehow around a meeting on agriculture and food, a relationship was struck and then later that year we had the WEF on Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, and we were able to have a much broader discussion about the opportunities.
This is a factory that produces fortified foods so, there’s a nutrition and health aspect to it. There’s a collaboration with the World Food Program, and how to link up to supporting refugees. They were able to take forward the conversation so, not just at the WEF on Africa summit but also, further their discussions with the key officials. That led a factory actually being established. It’s running as we speak and based on that innovative approach that was taken in Rwanda, Royal DSM then moved to Bangladesh to do something similar. So, that’s exciting and so, you can see the progression over a two to three-year period for just one single element that kicked off with this conversation where these two people happened to meet and were able to strike a match, so to speak.
Well, business is all about relationships and there’s no better place in the world to have them or start them than there, but just to close off with, Elsie. One of the issues I’ve seen, or one of the advantages of Davos over many years, is that the major trends in the world seem to somehow get exposed by you. Are there trends over the last couple of years that are starting to gather momentum?
One of the trends that is definitely worth paying attention to is on the health front. One of the things you’ll hear more about this year is about mental health. This I would link to a broader concern, which is psychological safety. So, be it from geo-economic tensions – we’re seeing a lot of stress that society is being affected by. An emotional wellbeing is manifesting itself in terms of mental health and how to stabilise that is a concern, and then equally a concern is the lack of control that people face. So, a key concern for leaders right now is how do we bridge the lack of trust between citizens and the governments? You’ve seen the recent protests in Europe but we also have a number happening in different parts of Africa at the moment, and that is a concern. Where do we look to for leadership to be able to stabilise these strains and the pressures that people are facing, that’s one, both economic because of the general feeling that people are getting sidelined. Hence, the backlash against globalisation. At the same time, those solutions are not easy, we know that so, one of the things we’re exploring differently, it’s a small example but I think it’s important, is the ‘friendship bench’ – I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, from Zimbabwe, which is a simple solution to deal with a complex problem, which is grandmothers being able to speak to grandmothers on a bench. So, we need to think a little bit differently about how we help people cope.
A change in climate is definitely a trend that is growing in momentum. You also mentioned the cyber-risk element and I would broaden it to more of cyber-dependencies. So, whether it’s us staring down at our phones and what that is doing to us. Also, as you may have seen recently, we launched a report on digital trust and to see that there’s a lack of trust in the cyberworld, so to speak – what people do with your data, privacy, whether they can trust the company or trust the products. So, this aspect of dependency on a platform or world or economy, while feeling that you’re not quite secure, or as secure as you might want to be.
That was Elsie Kanza, Africa Director at the WEF. I’m Alec Hogg, until the next time, cheerio.
Davos 2019 – this coverage of the global conversation on change is brought to you by BrightRock, the first ever needs matched life insurance that changes as your life changes.
