As the head of a company devoted to innovating products for people in the developing world, I look forward to the flurry of annual meetings surrounding the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Most years, I leave this eventful week filled with inspiration. This year, however, my enthusiasm was tempered by a sense of unease about the future of global development.
This is a pivotal year. We’re bidding farewell to the eight Millennium Development Goals set forth by the U.N. in 2000 to tackle poverty, hunger, disease, educational inequality and environmental degradation. In their place are a comprehensive set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals which will guide us through the next 15 years.
An overriding objective of these goals is to improve the lives of more than two billion people around the world who live on less than $2 a day. Everyone involved in global development recognizes that this lofty goal will require the involvement of the private sector. Most of us also know that such involvement can be incredibly lucrative for private companies who take on the challenge. Yet, at the meetings last month, I saw mostly familiar faces, with only a few new companies represented. Hopefully this does not reflect a lack of new interest.
About the author
Mikkel Vestergaard
Mikkel Vestergaard is the CEO and owner of Vestergaard, a global company dedicated to improving the lives of vulnerable people, especially those living in developing countries. Vestergaard follows a “humanitarian entrepreneurship” business model and produces game-changing solutions to fight malaria, waterborne and neglected tropical diseases, and hunger and malnutrition.
