Tshidi Mokgabudi from KPMG

On Thursday 11th June, representatives from 60 African and international businesses came together along with other dignitaries including the Ugandan Minister of State for Industry and Technology the Hon Simon Lokodo for a side event at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town 2009. They discussed the good progress the 18 initiatives that have already been announced have made towards their aim of improving the lives of people in poor countries. There was also exciting news from Microsoft Africa, Goldman Sachs and Biwater that they intend to develop initiatives under the BCtA. The details of these intiatives will be formally announced once they have been fully developed.

One of these ideas put forward was plans by Biwater to finance, design and construct a water treatment plant in Omdurman, part of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Biwater is a British company that specialises in water management and treatment. Through the use of innovative financing, the company will bring, for the first time, clean and safe water to 1.5 million people in this poor suburb of Khartoum, many of whom have moved here to escape conflict, poverty or environmental degradation. It is envisaged that if this project is successful it can be expanded to other countries in Africa. The details of the project are still to be finalised in collaboration with the BCtA partnership; watch this space for details of the formal announcement of this initiative!

The DFID website has a more comprehensive note of the event itself, as well as details of how else we work with business to tackle poverty across the globe. I will add videos from Coca-Cola and MAP International when I can upload them and the full collection of videos from the event will be available on the Business Call to Action website soon!

TATA Nano - click to go to the Nano website. Credit: TATA Motors

Companies such as TATA have taken advantage of lower local operating costs as well as their understanding of local markets, and a decade of unprecedented growth in much of the developing world that, despite recent economic woes, has produced a substantial middle class in many countries. Companies based in developing countries also have the added advantage that the economy in their home market is generally still growing - though at a much slower pace than the past 5 years or so - while those of companies based in Europe, America or Japan are seeing national economic growth stagnate or even decline. In addition, national businesses such as Brazil's Petrobras are expanding, in this case thanks to the discovery of huge oil reserves off the East coast of that country, or Vail, another Brazilian company, buying parts of its Anglo-Australian rival Rio Tinto.

Of course business all over the world is facing huge obstacles over the next few years, however we should expect the survivors to include a clutch of companies from emerging markets that have weathered the storm and are ready to take advantage of greater trade opportunities offered once the global economy picks up. They are also taking their place at the table of discussions usually dominated by large MNCs from industrialised countries, and DFID is encouraging this participation.

One example of this is the Business Call to Action (BCtA), launched by the Prime Minister last year. DFID is looking to expand the participation of Southern business in the BCtA to take advantage of the experience of Southern business leaders in social investment as well as an understanding of the issues facing developing countries. Businesspeople from emerging market based companies are key to ensuring the success of this initiative. Business itself will be key in driving growth, the main route for people out of poverty, and by thinking now about how to maximise the beneficial impacts of the private sector in developing countries we can work with the private sector to ensure that when the world economy starts to recover, people in poor countries are among the first to benefit. Our team is preparing for the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town in June where we hope to showcase initiatives from Southern based companies, who will join TATA and others in signing up to the BCtA. Watch this space for details of who gets on board!

As part of this, several companies including Vodafone, Coca-Cola and Diageo, developed ideas that help relieve poverty in poor countries while also bringing in profit and expanding their business. We filmed the CEOs of these companies talking about their company's ideas and the impact it has had to showcase at the event on 6th May. These clips were turned into a short film that was shown to the delegates. We then used the film to publicise the BCtA and encourage other companies to sign up.

In January we got the exciting news that our film had won a Bronze World medal at the prestigious New York Festivals International film & video awards. Now I would be the first to admit that this doesn't come close to the eight Oscars success enjoyed by Slumdog Millionaire last night, however the juries are made up of executives from many well respected studios and production companies, and I think this award can only raise the profile of an initiative that Bill Clinton said "can build a more just and equal world for our children and grandchildren".

The BCtA is an ongoing initiative and is still welcoming new companies on board - most recently CRU Investments who showcased their initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January.

One of my team's largest projects is the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA). Launched last year, it aims to improve the quality and availability of drugs in 7 pilot countries, while also making those drugs more affordable. It does this by bringing together government with pharmaceutical manufacturers and civil society (NGOs, cooperatives, trade unions, faith groups etc) to increase transparency in the supply chain with the aim of reducing the risk of fakes entering the market and opportunities for excessive mark ups in price. MeTA is a DFID funded project managed by an international Secretariat in Lewes and by national Secretariats in-country. DFID works in partnership with the international Secretariat, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank to deliver this project.

This story in the Metro, along with this earlier story from The Times a few years ago that I came across, made me think about the huge task that lies ahead for the MeTA project. 70,000 packs of fake medicine for diseases such as prostate cancer, schizophrenia and heart problems have managed to enter the UK supply chain. In this case the Medicines Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued four of its Class One emergency recall notices in a matter of days and most of the drugs were recalled, however as many as 25,000 of these were given to patients with little chance of recovering them. The World Health Organisation estimates that 1% of medicines in Western markets are fakes.

Compare this with the situation in many poorer countries, where the situation is much worse. We are fortunate to have a well funded regulatory body, stringent laws regarding the production and smuggling of fakes and a well regulated supply chain. In developing countries as much as one third of medicines in the market are fakes, with little or no regulation in the medicines supply chain. People unable to afford pharmacies or private clinics often have to resort to buying medicines from an open air market, and often the drugs they need are simply unavailable. Add to this the issues arising from poor infrastructure, bureaucratic import procedures and lack of trained staff means that over 2 billion people in the world cannot get the medicines that they require. These are the issues that DFID is tackling through MeTA.

To find out more about this issue, listen to the Radio4 broadcast that went out on February 5th or this interesting video about the problem in Iraq.

I joined the London based Business Alliances Team (BAT) in March 2008. BAT is the part of DFID that engages with business and encourages companies to think about how they can maximise their impacts on poverty reduction in developing countries.

Since starting in BAT I have worked on several large, high profile projects including the Business Call to Action and the Medicines Transparency Alliance, both launched in May 2008.

My blog is going to cover a range of (hopefully!) interesting topics surrounding the issues of working with the private sector, as well as life more generally at DFID. I hope you find it interesting and I look forward to seeing your comments!