Dr. Dambisa Moyo explains why government must step in an help.

Why it’s disappointing that corporations are expected to lead on public policy issues

Conferences

Why corporations are expected to lead on public policy


Why it’s disappointing that corporations are expected to lead on public policy issues


So you don't necessarily think that over time that recently more power has kind of gone from the public sector into the private. Oh, I do think that that's the case, but I think that that is not an equilibrium any of us should aspire to. I think that is in, you know, from the vantage point of being a board member. It's in some instances quite disappointing that, uh, we as board members or corporations are expected to lead on public policy issues like education, health care or even climate change. I mean, we we do rely very heavily on government helping us to think through how to measure and to think about risk mitigation, but also government has a broader mandate, um, to think about issues such as trade offs. I gave you an example something like racial discrimination. We can all agree and look at the numbers and see that actually having more diverse businesses, whether it's in terms of gender, race, um, in thought and in background, all of that is good stuff. Um, but you know, we also don't want to end up in a situation with the narrative becomes so aggressive that we're fighting discrimination with discrimination. Um, that's also not in equilibrium, which pursue and similarity with climate change. You know, there's no doubt about it. There's an urgent and important issue to address here, but we're not going to get it right until we understand that there are 1.5 billion people in the world, but no access to energy in a in a clean, cost effective way. And the risks of those people living in disorderly environment actually can come to haunt us through disorderly migration and other broader economic challenges. But again, one company can solve that by itself. It needs government involvement. It needs to partner, as we've seen, you know, with the vaccines. You know, there's no way those companies could have done that without really good engagement with government. And that's critically important