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Rwanda: President Kagame Joins World Business Leaders to Unveil Poverty Reduction Plans
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
6 May 2008
Posted to the web 6 May 2008
Kigali
Rwandan President Paul Kagame today joined leaders of the world's largest companies in London to showcase new core business initiatives to help reduce poverty in the developing countries, RNA reports.
The Business Call to Action event is attracting more than 80 CEO's from the world's largest companies including Citi Group, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Sumitomo Chemical, and Vodafone among others.
With high hopes of a dozen global companies announcing new initiatives, Microsoft already plans to open a new innovation center in Rwanda that will enhance the country's ICT vision and help thousands of university students develop skills and hundreds of small technology companies get started and grow.
President Kagame called on the business leaders to invest in developing countries for both fighting poverty and greater investment returns of their companies. Kagame said, "In our own case in Rwanda, international and domestic investment in ICT, financial sector, agriculture and tourism are already proving that the private sector way to reducing poverty is effective. More private investment will take us a long way through this productive path".
"I call upon all of you, global business leaders to join governments to regroup and renew public and private sector partnerships to create investment opportunities to the people of the developing world. This will also mean greater investment returns for your companies", President Kagame underlined.
According to the UK Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander, "Africa and other parts of the developing world offer a wealth of business opportunities that make real commercial sense. I am hopeful that after today's event businesses will be inspired to make concrete commitments and to speed up action they have already planned. These commitments could have a life changing impact on literally millions of poor people."
The event's host Mr. Gordon Brown UK's Prime Minister, hopes that more companies will sign up in the run-up to the United Nations summit in September. Mr. Gordon said that, this year must be a "year of action" if the development emergency is to be tackled..
Halfway towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target date of 2015 very little has been done as agreed by the international community in 2000. World leaders are now very keen to include the role of the private sector which had been neglected.
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According to Kemal Dervis, UNDP Administrator, "In the race to achieve the MDGs, one of the greatest untapped resources is the private sector. Businesses are engines of growth and sustainable development."
The United Nations is organizing a high-level meeting on the MDGs in September, bringing together world leaders, civil society and the private sector to help translate existing commitments into action and bolster the global partnership for development.
The Business Call to Action is part of a major campaign called the Call to Action, which seeks to accelerate progress towards meeting the MDGs by 2015. This year has been turned into a critical year for action on the MDGs.
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| Copyright © 2008 Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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