Innovation in a crisis - Private sector strategies for development: access, competition and engagement in a downturn

[Overseas Development Institute,Department for International Development & Business Action for Africa]

These are challenging times for the private sector development in developing countries. The downturn puts jobs, profits and poverty reduction goals at risk. It also questions old assumptions about the public-private division of responsibilities in delivering growth and development. Any time of intense pressure is also a time of innovation. Just as the public sector is developing its stake in supporting the private sector to keep business going, so we may have to adapt our views on how private sector firms can best play their roles in spurring growth and contributing to development.

Will the economic downturn put a stop to progress? Some reversals are inevitable: sales and jobs lost for poor entrepreneurs and workers; price-cutting and the credit squeeze putting ever greater pressure on emerging domestic private sectors; corporates focusing on necessities of survival not contributions to development.

But then it is all the more important to seek out the innovation and ways forward: strategies that help secure market access of the poor; the business case and tools that help corporates maintain their commitment to responsible business, just at a time when their workers, suppliers and consumers in the South need it most; and the way forward for governments to manage the swing from competition to renewed regulation, in ways that serve long term growth and development.

What are your views?

1. Where does the role for business begin and end in the development landscape?
2. How will the downturn affect corporate engagement with responsible business, and what innovative forms of engagement are needed in response?
3. As economic contraction constrains the access to markets of poor producers and consumers, what can government, business and civil society do to mitigate the squeeze and help them exploit new opportunities?
4. As the orthodoxy swings back from free market competition to renewed regulation, what impact will this have on the approaches of developing country governments to establishing competitive markets that support long term growth and development?

[Katie Hutt]

Role for Lawyers?

I have a general comment after this evening's interesting and encouraging discussions.

I work for Advocates for International Development (www.a4id.org), a UK charity that matches top quality lawyers from leading international law firms and chambers (such as Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and White & Case), with developing country governments and development NGOs (such as ActionAid, Farm Africa and Oxfam) who require their skills. All legal assistance is provided for free to support the private sector effort to achieve the MDGs.

I would be very interested to learn how DFID and others aim to involve lawyers and the law as part of the private sector strategy. Law underpins much of the world's economic and social activity. Lawyers are required to prepare and implement legislation and regulations which allow businesses, governments and economies to flourish, lawyers are needed to ensure that contracts, trade, finance, intellectual property and real estate agreements are properly prepared, negotiated and executed and the skills of the legal sector are needed to support stable and sustainable economic growth.

A4ID provides access to a network of tens of thousands of lawyers willing to use their skills to support the achievement of the MDGs for free. I look forward to hearing more about how DFID will support organisations such as ours to allow more lawyers to play their role in promoting international development.