By Paul Polman, Siddharth Chatterjee and Myriam Sidibe



The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that now is “a defining moment for modern society.  History will judge the efficacy of the response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors for the benefit of our human family.”



Governments, the private sector and development institutions need to come together in innovative ways not just to flatten the curve of infection and mitigate the economic disruption, but also to prepare for the new normal of the post-Covid world in Africa and the rest of the world. &nbsp;Greater partnership between the public and private sectors is going to be critical. The fight to flatten the coronavirus curve is an acid test for stakeholder capitalism and especially for multilateralism.



As Covid-19 continues to spread sickness and death, Africa has so far escaped the worst effects. The continent’s lagging healthcare infrastructure, however, makes it highly vulnerable if the virus reaches the high-velocity community transmission we have seen in Italy, Spain and New York.&nbsp; Not only are health systems delicate, but crucial medical supplies are far from sufficient, and social protection as a whole is weak.



With the health crisis also becoming an economic and soon a social crisis, the continent is under siege.&nbsp; Many companies are struggling through the economic slowdown, with tourism and smaller enterprises the most challenged. With bankruptcy and job losses looming, many families are already reducing spending and consumption.&nbsp; In the absence of significant fiscal stimulus – which few African countries can afford anyway – some projections are cutting the continent’s GDP growth in 2020 by as much as eight percentage points.



No one knows for sure what is ahead, with scenarios changing daily as new information comes through. Many firms are focused on business continuity, employee safety and simply survival and lack the luxury of assisting external stakeholders. But it’s time for an all-hands-on-deck response, both to flatten the curve of infections and keep businesses resilient, and to be ready to restart as physical distancing ends.&nbsp; More than ever before, the private sector needs to deploy its full capabilities to innovate and bring positive, sustainable change – to help secure strong markets in the future.



There are several areas where private sector support is essential. Current priorities include unified communication platforms to enable populations to practise the needed preventative behaviors (washing hands, wearing masks, and practising physical distancing), as well as managing stocks of essential materials, test kits, ventilators and oxygen and PPE. Support would also include protecting the most vulnerable people from the economic effects of the pandemic, especially where curfews are enforced.



This is also a unique opportunity to challenge sceptics, in both the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors, with a new blueprint of collaboration. The World Health Organization has issued guidelines on engaging the private sector as part of a whole-of-society response to the pandemic and has signed an iconic partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce. The African Union and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have also launched a public-private partnership known as the Africa Covid-19 Response Fund, which raises resources to prevent transmission and support sustainable medical responses.



In Kenya the national government has led the charge in fighting Covid-19 by rapidly scaling up a large array of public health interventions and putting into force social interaction rules. To complement the government’s preparedness and response efforts for the next six months, the UN, together with humanitarian non-governmental organizations launched a flash appeal seeking over $267 million to respond to the critical needs of 10 million of the country’s most vulnerable people.&nbsp;



So far, the pandemic has not been the finest hour for international cooperation. But the role of the UN and the private sector have never been more critical as an enabler of multisectoral partnerships for deliveries, and also to keep the focus on the most vulnerable that these partnerships need to reach. &nbsp;



In Kenya, and under the leadership of the government, the UN has built a model to catalyze public-private action: the SDG Partnership Platform. It is a tested instrument for engagement that has brought together a variety of private players in previous initiatives to co-create and rapidly deploy, with government, large-scale shared-value solutions to address the challenges our societies and the planet are facing. It is through such a mechanism, for example, that the UN mobilized the private sector to carry out a maternal mortality reduction campaign in Kenya’s northeastern counties, one that was recognized as a global best practice.



Kenya’s<a href="https://www.covid19businessresponse.ke/"> National Business Compact on Coronavirus</a>, a gathering of companies aimed at accelerating local action and supporting governmental efforts against the pandemic, got successfully off the ground with the help of the UN SDG Partnership Platform, and champions from private sector and civil society. &nbsp;



The Kenyan model of cooperation could take shape all over Africa. Such models allow governments to foster an ecosystem of purposeful partnerships; to amplify private-sector philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and policy advocacy for national mitigation; and to accelerate shared-value partnerships. It also allows the UN to play its role as a neutral broker, and steer a much-needed balance between lethargic action on one hand and misdirected reactions on the other.&nbsp;



This may well be the blueprint needed to fight the next global pandemic, whose speed and fury could surpass what we are witnessing now.



– <a href="https://twitter.com/PaulPolman">Paul Polman</a> is co-founder of IMAGINE, Chair of the International Chambers of Commerce and former CEO of Unilever; <a href="https://twitter.com/sidchat1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Siddharth Chatterjee</a> is the UN Resident Coordinator of Kenya and <a href="https://twitter.com/Myriam_Sidibe">Myriam Sidibe</a> is a Senior Fellow at Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

Myriam Sidibe, Siddharth Chatterjee, and Paul Polman join Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta, in Nairobi, Kenya at an event; Photo supplied

Op-Ed: How Multilateralism Through Public-Private Partnerships Is Key To Flatten The Curve

At the beginning of August, Africa’s richest man according to FORBES, Aliko Dangote, signed an energy infrastructure partnership with the world’s two largest private equity firms, American-based Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group.
Dangote made a commitment to invest a combined $5 billion by 2019 with New York-based Blackstone in power projects in sub-Saharan Africa and formed a joint venture with Carlyle to invest an unspecified amount in Nigerian oil and gas ventures and other African projects.
This is one of many examples from the continent, showing a step in the right direction in the private equity space for companies hoping to implement projects that require copious amounts of capital.
Private equity refers to shareholder capital invested in private companies. Firms seeking private equity funding often want to finance business expansions, develop new technologies, and complete acquisitions of other businesses among other reasons. The size of the private equity market has grown steadily since the 1970s. Africa accounts for around 1% of private equity investment worldwide, says the Chief Executive of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein.
Patrycja Kula, a Business Development Manager at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, says private equity is also good for the stock exchange. She gives Alexander Forbes, the pension fund giant that delisted in an R8.2 billion buyout in 2007, as an example. It was a R9.7 billion-company when it relisted, showing that private equity helps a lot.
Although the South African private equity industry is small in comparison to those of the United States and Britain, it is well established and locally significant. It may be argued, according to the Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SAVCA) Industry Performance Survey in 2013, that the country has one of the most sophisticated private equity industries among emerging and developed markets, with different funds at all stages of business development, from start-up venture capital funds through to late-stage and buy-out funds.
According to the World Bank, African nations need an extra $50 billion a year to ease energy shortages and transportation bottlenecks. Since the mid-1990s, financing for African power projects has averaged around $1.2 billion a year. This is split between public and private money.
In South Africa, the report on the Economic Impact of Venture Capital and Private Equity in South Africa in 2013 emphasized the benefits of private equity and venture capital transactions to the development of the country’s economy. It stressed that they are not confined to investee companies. Besides providing access to capital, Aubrey Shabane, the Manager of the Development Bank of South Africa’s Private Equity &amp; Direct Equities unit, says these investors bring dynamism, a depth of operational experience, huge financial acumen, strategic partners and foresight.
“As we face several economic challenges, including exceptionally high and persistent unemployment, it is rewarding to note the effect of this type of investment on job creation,” says Shabane.
“Companies with private equity and venture capital investors clearly do create employment and those in our survey indicated they have grown their staff by around 40 percent in the two-year period covered by this research.”
According to the KPMG and the SAVCA survey on the industry’s performance in the country over 2013, the private equity industry has R162.2 billion in funds under management, an increase of 16.9% from 2012. It adds that R58.6 billion of the funds under management are in undrawn commitments at the end of 2013, meaning that R46.1 billion is available for future investments in South Africa and R12.5 billion for the entire African continent.
This report also notes that private equity is an important source of Foreign Direct Investment, both indirectly via the raising of offshore money by local fund managers and by direct co-investment by foreign investors.
Speaking at the SAVCA Gordon Institute of Business Science for Private Equity in Illovo, Johannesburg, Stuart Bradley, a Senior Partner at Phatisa, a private equity fund manager investing in Africa, says that private equity is the most expensive way of getting funding or capital and should be a last resort for any business. Bradley adds that it is advisable for businesses to try other avenues first, like internal cash generation, family and friends, banks, mezzanine finance or even defer projects.

An Expensive Necessity  For Africa

Finding your perfect match is never easy. But it’s been made easier now thanks to Chinedu Onyeaso and Emeka Akano. The two Nigerian entrepreneurs are pioneering the way co-founders in business find one another in Africa by bringing global Founder2be’s match-making service to the continent for the first time.
When you sign up on Founder2be’s website, you create a profile including the type of co-founder you’re looking for. In this way, someone interested in working with you will contact you via an anonymous, built-in messaging system that allows you to decide who you share your contact details with. If all goes well online, meeting in person would be the next natural step until the two founders decide whether to work together or not.
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Onyeaso and Akano took the idea further by organizing events. In the case of Nigeria, the online service and the Founder2be events go hand-in-hand, allowing for a lot more entrepreneurs to meet and connect.
“For the Lagos events, besides the networking, we bring in a few notable speakers to share some of their experiences and knowledge with the attendees. So the event also provides people with the opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs and professionals so as to be better equipped to start and run their business,” says Akano.
In August, the first Founder2be Nigeria event was held on Victoria Island. Speakers included entrepreneurs to legal and information technology experts, who were all partial to business creation. Even Tomi Davies, the convener of Lagos Angel Network, an exclusive network for angel investors focused on supporting early stage start-ups in Lagos, was in attendance.
Founder2be provides an environment for people interested in business to learn, connect, share ideas and potentially find partners. These co-founders can come in the form of a business partner, mentor, adviser or investor for a business. It allows individuals with different skills sets to connect and work on ideas to launch start-ups. It’s reportedly the leading co-founder matching community in more than 100 countries.
Asked whether they have come across entrepreneurs who have become co-founders from the Nigerian network, Onyeaso says it’s still early days, but they’ve received positive feedback from some of attendees of the event.
“I met quite a few people I’d never encountered previously within my personal tech network, and I think with a few tweaks and consistency, the event and the community that hopefully emerges from broken ice could lead to many interesting transactions,” says Bankole Oluwafemi, founder of TechCabal, an online technology publication.
The duo became friends while they were university students in Ghana. They relocated to Britain after completing their undergraduate studies to obtain their Master’s in engineering at the University of Nottingham.
After graduating and working in Britain for a short while, they returned to Nigeria. They had been involved in the creation of affordable web design and corporate identity branding services to SMEs in Nigeria where the two identified a gap in the untapped market in the education sector.
Onyeaso and Akano then co-founded Entarado, a web development company empowering small businesses with web and mobile solutions. The business launched WebBlis to help other businesses gain an online presence and now they are working on EasySchool, a platform to help schools better manage their administrative functions, such as sending results to students.
From there, they became Nigerian ambassadors for the Finnish-created Founder2be forum. It is part of a global event which is held in major cities around the world.
Following two successful events last year, the two entrepreneurs hope to host at least one event every three months. The forum is growing so fast that interest has spread to other parts of Nigeria in Abuja and Port Harcourt.
“We understand that having the right founding team is an important step in the right direction for any start-up towards building a successful business. However, we also know that there are a number of things that are needed for someone to build a successful business. Things such as access to funds, mentors, work spaces and support,” says Akano.
Onyeaso adds Founder2be Nigeria is working on partnerships with investor networks, like Lagos Angel Network, accelerators and hubs to be able to help Nigerians get the support they need to start and grow their business once they find the perfect co-founder.
Through Entarado and Founder2be, the pair hopes to provide a platform to help foster entrepreneurship in their community. They believe that everyone knows something, but nobody knows everything and that by sharing ideas and meeting with people of similar interests, they will be able to find partners and get the help needed to start or grow their businesses.
Although they didn’t meet each other on the popular match-making site for co-founders, Onyeaso and Akano believe they have what it takes to spark a revolution in Nigeria’s budding start-up scene.

Tag: Partnerships

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Op-Ed: How Multilateralism Through Public-Private Partnerships Is Key To Flatten The Curve

An Expensive Necessity For Africa

The Cupids Of Commerce