The 2024 Global Inclusive Growth Summit, hosted by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and media partner Devex, brought together diverse voices — from small business owners to philanthropists to policymakers — to find practical solutions to global challenges. In the center’s 10th year of driving impact, the April event in Washington, D.C., tackled complex topics, including the role of multilateral development banks in an evolving development landscape, strategies for responsible artificial intelligence, or AI, and ways to ensure inclusive digital ecosystems.
For a decade, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth has worked to bring together philanthropic and corporate assets to catalyze social impact, said Payal Dalal, the center’s first executive vice president for global programs. “We’ve proven that if you layer on aggregated anonymized data, human capital and expertise, and with our network of clients and stakeholders, impact happens faster,” said Dalal. “That’s one of the legacies of the center in its first 10 years.”
Having already worked with the center for six years, in her new role, Dalal is excited to bring different teams together for “greater learning, greater cross-pollination, greater innovation, and hopefully greater impact.”
Devex asked Dalal for her key takeaways from the 2024 Global Inclusive Growth Summit and how these could shape the center’s work going forward.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
As the center marks its 10th anniversary, what solutions or collaborations stand out as highlights of its work?
In the last decade, I think there are really two standout solutions we’ve brought to bear.
The first is the center’s work around small business growth and how technology can help support the resiliency of small businesses. Since the center’s founding, we have always been focused on small businesses, but we really doubled down on this in 2021 when the center stood up a portfolio of programs called Mastercard Strive, with the idea that technology can increase the resilience and growth of small businesses if done intentionally.
We do a lot of work to help small businesses get capital, go digital, and gain networks and know-how. The Strive program is currently in over 20 countries and it’s a portfolio that’s worth over $100 million. Through it, we are driving impact for tens of millions of small businesses around the world, and we have built a model that others can harness and replicate.
Secondly, we have done really innovative work around mainstreaming data science into social sector organizations. The center's creation of data.org, alongside the Rockefeller Foundation, has been monumental in building the field and capacity. And, to further that work, we recently announced the Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Inclusion Challenge, a global call for existing innovative AI solutions seeking to accelerate inclusion and economic empowerment.
These are two exciting things that have been part of the center’s 10-year legacy but also show our future priorities as we continue to place large bets on small businesses and innovative emergent tech programs.
This year saw the fourth edition of the Global Inclusive Growth Summit. What keeps this event relevant?
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed progress toward the sustainable development goals. Now, more than ever, there’s an imperative and urgency to do things more creatively, with the right people and organizations. At the heart of the summit is this question: How do we get the right people in the room, who have the right knowledge, expertise, networks, and resources, to think creatively about achieving the SDGs and addressing international development issues?
The summit happens on the margins of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings, which attract government stakeholders and multilateral development banks from around the world. Increasingly, there’s an interesting conversation about the future of multilateral development banks and their role in international development. The summit provided an opportunity to re-imagine how MDBs can be even more effective when it comes to international development issues.
Other interesting thematics included: How we approach global problems with local solutions because we know that a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work; intersectionality and how we think about solutions more holistically; and how we can be gender intentional when it comes to emerging tech, so we don’t exacerbate gender inequities.
This summit seeks to advance solutions to today’s most pressing challenges. What do you see as the biggest challenges in the next decade, and how are changing global circumstances shifting the center’s priorities?
Technology and emerging technology can really help drive impact and better outcomes for individuals and small businesses around the world, but we must be intentional about how we do that. The conversations at the summit around generative AI and cybersecurity are increasingly timely because, as these technologies are being built and proliferated, there really needs to be a pause to consider the negative externalities — how might this technology exacerbate existing inequalities or biases; and how do we get the right data to create models that have equitable and equal outcomes. We are optimistic but also realize we need to be thoughtful about our approach.
We have a strong record of data science and leveraging it for social impact, so we want to take a similar approach to AI. At the summit, Mastercard announced our intention to launch an AI for good global challenge, which we recently opened applications for on June 6. Through the Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Inclusion Challenge, we hope to receive applications with positive use cases on generative AI for social impact, in areas such as financial inclusion, access to capital for small businesses, or place-based economic development.
Conversations at the summit are focused on advancing solutions. What are some key learnings from this year’s event on developing, implementing, and scaling solutions?
I really love that the summit brings to life concrete and practical solutions from around the world.
Take Manu Chopra, an Indian entrepreneur who has a social enterprise working with rural women. India has incredible language diversity — more than 200 languages regionally. When we’re thinking about things such as AI technology, whose large language models have primarily been created using mainstream languages, that means we’re already creating technology that has built-in language bias, which could potentially leave behind rural populations. One of the things Chopra’s been doing is creating income-generating opportunities for rural women in India, by having them read or speak into their phones, which then collects language data that they’re able to build AI models around.
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It’s a great example of reaching last-mile populations and showing that technology can provide economic opportunity, and it’s giving rural women agency and power within this new digital ecosystem. It’s very practical and a model that I think can be replicated across sectors, which is what we love to see.
What insights did you take away from the summit this year that will inform and inspire you in your new role and as the center prepares for the next decade of work?
Sometimes in this field, we neglect to say how hard the work is. We’re not only managing internal dynamics within our own organizations and stakeholders, but we’re trying to manage the heaviness of the social issues we’re working to address — for example, gender and racial equity, climate change, and education opportunities and access.
What is beautiful about the summit was that it brought leaders together who could not only share tactical learnings about their topics but they could also build a community and realize they’re not alone in trying to tackle these issues. For me, a key insight was that this community is needed, and when we are together, we have the energy to achieve our shared goals.
The other key insight was that there is an appetite for partnership. Increasingly, people are realizing that no singular entity or industry can solve these massive issues in silos. Instead, they are thinking about how we can partner creatively so it’s not transactional, but rather transformational. In short, we’re co-creating solutions with the people that are most impacted by these challenges.
Join us for the Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Inclusion Challenge by submitting your application for consideration. Learn more about the challenge and the application process here.
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