Digital Event: What does Davos mean for global development?

DAVOS, Switzerland — Leaders in global health, international development, and humanitarian response will be critical participants in the conversations highlighted by the World Economic Forum’s theme for its annual Davos meeting: how to create a shared future in a fractured world. This year, there were some key takeaways and practical opportunities for partnership in the development space. “Everyone, from corporate executives to heads of state, they’re talking SDGs,” Raj Kumar, Devex president and editor-in-chief, told Devex Senior Reporter Catherine Cheney in a conversation for Executive Members. “In terms of the big picture, it’s not like development is off in its own corner somewhere. It’s a theme, I feel like, in every discussion.” There was a lot of emphasis in Davos on systems thinking, from health systems to education systems to food systems. Depending on who you ask, Davos is either the ultimate megaphone for big partnerships, or a place where you risk getting lost in the shuffle. But it is undoubtedly among the best venues for putting partnerships together. Take, as one example, the Maverick Collective, the philanthropic and advocacy initiative that Kate Roberts of Population Services International formed due largely to connections she made as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. “I spoke to a CEO of a big pharmaceutical company who told me if it weren’t for Davos, it would have been hard to create CEPI,” Kumar said, in reference to the Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness Innovations, launched at Davos a year ago. “Because when you get a bunch of people in a room together at the senior, CEO level and a few people push and commit, it’s hard for everyone else in the room not to commit.” A theme across many Davos sessions this year was innovative finance, from blended finance to results-based finance (with one of many examples this week being a plan from the Gates Foundation to eliminate malaria in Central America). It is clearly vital to have senior leadership in any major organization thinking about questions like: “How do development impact bonds work?” But such developments are also only the start of a lengthy process. “Ultimately, we need to turn these innovative finance tools into products, where they’re easy to launch,” Kumar said. On the final day of the forum, Kumar is joining a session organized by Pact CEO Mark Viso on equitable progress in the Fourth Industrial Revolution — which is how WEF founder Klaus Schwab describes the current era of technological transformation. The rise of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence can be disruptive in a bad way, for example, when it comes to job loss, or in a good way, such as when it comes to mobile health, in developing country contexts. One key issue is leveraging data for good, for example to improve humanitarian response, while making sure to protect security and privacy. “No matter how things change, we’re going to need people to deliver development — that’s not going to go away,” Kumar said. But it will be critical to improve that delivery. Organizations who get more efficient, who are able to use more local partners, who have the best talent, and who have the best systems for measuring and tracking, are the ones that will succeed, he added.