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Tanzania: Help Combat Deprivation, Firm Urged
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The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
8 May 2008
Posted to the web 8 May 2008
Britain and the UN Development Programme have launched an initiative to mobilise businesses to support developing countries to achieve millennium development goals (MDGs).
According to a statement by the British High Commission in Dar es Salaam, the launching of the initiative called Business Call to Action in London is part of a concerted push for the achievements of MDGs.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis led the campaign.
The Call to Action that was launched by Mr Gordon Brown at the United Nations in July 2007 to encourage governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and faith groups to pool resources and efforts to reach MDGs by 2015.
"Today's event is about enlisting the support and expertise of global business to develop new and innovative ways to spread growth, prosperity and opportunity in poor countries across the World," said Mr Brown.
The initiative sought to challenge companies to explore new business opportunities which will contribute to the MDGs, as well as making commercial sense.
Mr Dervis said the private sector had not been exhausted in a race to achieve MDGs since businesses are engine of growth and sustainable development with potential to improve the lives of people through innovation, investment and creation of decent
"The Business Call at Action challenges companies to explore new business opportunities that make ending poverty part of their daily business," he said.
Ghanaian President John Kufuor and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame also attended the event.
Some companies demonstrated how their core business activities were contributing to growth and the reduction of poverty in developing countries.
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Coca-Cola and Vodafone officials said their companies' activities were contributing to poverty reduction in Tanzania.
Vodafone said Vodacom's M-Pesa service was providing financial services to poor people while Coca-Cola noted that its network of manual distribution centres was increasing jobs and incomes.
The new initiative is not about charity but, about inspiring companies to realise that contributing to the MDGs also makes good business sense and by contributing to a safer and more prosperous world they secure their future commercial success and creating a more profitable business environment.
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