Alec Hogg reports to us for the last time from Davos, Switzerland as the World Economic Forum winds up for 2015. Hogg extends a fascinating array of insights from the breadths of the knowledge gained from the world’s most recognised scholars, leaders and game-changers. Featuring in this final instalment among other noteworthy individuals is Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, South Africa’s very former Deputy President, who is now making waves on a global scale and garnering substantial respect as she endeavours to change the world, enlightening Alec about the global journey of gender equality. Another noteworthy figure is Professor Laura Tyson from the University of California who left Alec with much to ponder on the topic of inclusive growth, equality and geopolitical tensions in Europe particularly. Alec also got to get Laurie Dippenaar’s altogether refreshing perspective on income inequality, an interview that is not to be missed. All-in-all wrapping up a very successful and jam-packed WEF experience sure to leave us with much inspiration to participate as active citizens in our communities so that we too can begin to change the realms that we live in. – LF
ALEC HOGG: This is Alec Hogg coming to you from Davos, for the last time, in 2015, where the World Economic Forum has just concluded. Here is Davos Diary – day five.
Well the first session that I got to, was on talent – winning with talent. It was one of those unusual opportunities where I could pick-and-choose and go to something that wasn’t obligatory. This year has been a pretty tough year and focused, in the various sessions that I had to cover for ourselves, for The Guardian newspaper in London, and clearly for CNBC, but on this one what was most impressive and something that I’ll be taking away is a scheme that has been put together by Marks & Spencer in the U.K.
Mark Bolland was explaining how they have internships of one month, so what they’re doing here is bringing in people who haven’t had a job (young people who haven’t had a job) for at least six months, and giving them an opportunity to do something within the corporate sphere. They’re rolling this out to 26 of their big suppliers and 1000 SME’s (that’s their target) in the first year. So, if you supply Marks and Spencer they will encourage, if you’re say a dairy farmer in Cumbria; they’ll encourage you to employ somebody from the community to work with you just for a month and to give them the work experience, which will then enable them to come into the system.
This is something that is now being repeated all over the world. We heard from Patrick De Maeseneire, who runs Adecco, how the Swiss are way ahead of most countries around the world. In fact, they rate number one in the ability to retract and retain talent because they have a system structured, within the workforce of vocational training. Children are encouraged, while they are at high school, to work for a couple of weeks in the holidays, and certainly when they’re at university they’re encouraged to do that as well, and so when they come out of their graduation or, indeed only 18 percent get to go to university. The rest go straight into the workforce, they do get exposed to the skills that business actually wants. Not the skills that academia thinks it needs to provide. These are issues that I’ll be taking be home and thinking about employing in our own company.
From there I got to meet with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who you might recall was the Deputy President in South Africa. She is now at the United Nations. She’s driving the ‘gender equality agenda’ and she’s also the Under Secretary of the U.N., so Phumzile is quite a lady. She came across, in her panel, very forcefully, arguing with the Prime Minister of Norway, who said she didn’t really think it was necessary to have quotas anymore for the promotion of women. Phumzile said, ‘well, that’s fine in Norway but in most countries in the world there is not gender parity, and particularly in Africa’.
One of the bright spots of Africa is Rwanda, where Paul Kagame, the President was on the same panel, explained that the reason for this was after the genocide in that country the Rwandans decided to write into their constitution, gender equity. To the degree that 30 percent of the cabinet, at least, have to be women.  This has resulted in 64 percent, nearly two-thirds of the parliamentarians in Rwanda being female. What a turn-up for the books that is, for an African country but what Phumzile said was ‘you cannot divorce Rwanda from the rest of Africa because the culture is not that dissimilar, so if it can happen there, it can happen everywhere. It is only a question of leadership’.
Regarding leadership – She has been displaying that in a very forceful manner at the United Nations when she left South Africa, with the Zuma Administration coming in, where she was no longer welcome. She went for a PhD in mobile technology and has used that to a very good effect, in a HeForShe program, at the U.N., which is all on social media, and had a billion people who were engaging together on it, at one point in time. Quite a lady our Phumzile, well let’s hope that she does come back to a leadership role in South Africa at some point in the future.
I then moved onto meet with Laura Tyson, from the University of California in Berkley. She’s one of the stars of Davos, a regular here. Often in the preliminary sessions and she was engaged in the summing up of the insights on growth and stability.  There were a couple of issues that came out that were highlighted here, in Davos. Not least the story of geopolitics, there, there’s concern that the Ukrainian story will develop even further, and cause more problems for Europe as a whole, in fact, possibly even destabilise Europe.
Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin is very unpopular in these circles, at the moment. He’s been isolated, pretty much by Europe and, when I asked the question of Professor Tyson, who was on a very erudite panel, discussing this thing, whether the BRICS companies would be at risk of being drawn into this conflict. She was quite determined in her response that it was most unlikely and that the BRICS countries are…they might be an economic unit, but even they are not as happy with Putin (as the rest of the world seems to be).
She also touched on the whole story of inclusive growth, and that’s really a theme that is coming out of Davos this year. Gender equity is one of those areas where you just can’t argue against it. There’s incontrovertible evidence that bringing women into the workforce improves economic growth. Women are a beneficiary for any economic system, so to have discrimination against them in hiring practices just doesn’t make sense.
Paul Polman, who’s the Chief Executive of Unilever said as much in one of the sessions on Saturday, when he reckoned that anyone with a brain will know it makes a lot more sense to hire from a 100 percent of the workforce, rather than 50 percent of the workforce.
My take-outs, well on the inclusive growth figure issue, I’m fully with the gender equity. On the one issue that I’m not quite sure about yet, it’s to do with income inequality. There’s a lot of beating of the drums that Gini coefficient, which is the difference between what the highest earners earn and the lowest earners earn, in a country are now stabilising. We heard from Doctor Kim, of the World Bank in an ‘off the record’ session, that the World Bank is now not sure how to actually track the money that is owned by the wealthy, so rather they want to have a look at what happens to the bottom 40 percent of any population and is their situation improving faster than the overall economic growth (or the overall GDP). That, to me sounds like a smart way of approaching things.
There was also an interesting discussion with Laurie Dippenaar, who admits that he’s one of the zero-point-one percent in the world. The co-founder of FirstRand said, ‘the thought that had been circulating in left-wing circles, that you take the 80 richest people in the world and put them in a bus, confiscate their wealth, and give it to… Because it is equivalent to what is owned by the bottom three-and-a-half thousand in the world, it would be a good thing’. He said that that’s crazy. Of those 80 people, take for instance Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They’re on the list. They’ve invented Google. Who pays for Google? How much has Google improved? So you need incentives in the system to stimulate economic growth and to benefit all. Another example there, of course, is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has been an investment into uplifting people all over the world.
The final take-away, on geo politics, as far as South Africa is concerned is actually not a bad one at all. It is nice to be far, far away from the hotspots in the Middle East and Ukraine, where it looks like things are going to get a lot worse, before they get any better.
This is Alec Hogg, signing off for the last time from Davos, for World Economic Forum 2015.
