Panel 1 — Devel­op­ment and Local Ownership

All devel­op­ment projects are designed to ben­e­fit a given pop­u­la­tion — defined as “dis­ad­van­taged”, “at risk”, or “vul­ner­a­ble”. These ben­e­fi­cia­ries make the large fig­ures of “high-impact” projects and pop­u­late the home­pages of advo­cacy cam­paigns. How­ever when it comes to gov­er­nance, the pic­ture is quite dif­fer­ent — they are some­times con­sulted, rarely par­tic­i­pate, and almost never decide. How can devel­op­ment projects gen­uinely include the pop­u­la­tions they strive for in decision-making? What lessons can we learn from community-based approaches? How can tech­nol­ogy help to reduce constraints?

Panel 2 — BRICS Abroad

Rep­re­sent­ing a quar­ter of the global GDP, the BRICS coun­tries — Brazil, Rus­sia, India, China, and South Africa — have begun to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant amounts of for­eign aid to other devel­op­ing coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly those in Africa. With assis­tance from tra­di­tional donors such as the US and West­ern Europe decreas­ing in real terms in 2011, emerg­ing BRICS donors offer coun­tries more oppor­tu­ni­ties to finance much-needed devel­op­ment. How­ever, there is a ris­ing con­cern over this type of fund­ing as it typ­i­cally comes in the absence of domes­tic frame­works for account­abil­ity on inter­na­tional engage­ments. This shift has height­ened wor­ries on this model’s poten­tial to under­cut inter­na­tional stan­dards and encour­age unsus­tain­able poli­cies, gov­ern­ments, and debt. Are these wor­ries over-rated con­sid­er­ing that some for­eign aid is bet­ter than none at all? This panel will explore whether the BRICS present an alter­na­tive and com­pet­ing model of involve­ment and for­eign assis­tance to that of tra­di­tional donors and whether this aid is more, less, or equally effec­tive in improv­ing stan­dards of liv­ing for recipients.

Panel 1 — The Future of National Resource Companies

In a time of eco­nomic uncer­tainty, state-owned enter­prises (SOEs) have reemerged as pow­er­ful play­ers in shap­ing the economies of many devel­op­ing nations, and in shap­ing the global econ­omy as a whole. This is espe­cially true in the extrac­tive indus­tries, where national resource com­pa­nies (NRCs) play an immense role in the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal land­scape of resource-rich nations. This is also a time when many changes are occur­ring in SOEs, includ­ing NRCs, around the globe. Increas­ingly, NRCs are under­go­ing par­tial pri­va­ti­za­tions in order to bring in out­side cap­i­tal from pri­vate investors. They are expand­ing their hori­zons and expand­ing beyond national bound­aries, in a trend of increas­ing glob­al­iza­tion. As state-sponsored cap­i­tal­ism con­tin­ues to present an ever grow­ing chal­lenge to tra­di­tional cap­i­tal­ist mod­els, and NRCs con­tinue play an impor­tant role in national economies and in the global econ­omy, it is cru­cial that we exam­ine the best prac­tices which must be imple­mented, and reforms which must be made, in order to max­i­mize the value of these enter­prises for all stakeholders.

Panel 2 — China and the Next Devel­op­ment Path

Since the begin­ning of the Reform and Open­ing up process in 1978, China has expe­ri­enced a tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tion from a sleep­ing giant to the second-largest eco­nomic power in the world. Dur­ing the process of cre­at­ing a mas­sive mar­ket econ­omy and capac­ity, China lifted more than 600 mil­lion peo­ple out of poverty, account­ing for more than 75% of poverty reduc­tion in the devel­op­ing world, and cre­ated a bur­geon­ing mid­dle class. How­ever, the coun­try is now fac­ing increas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties when she pro­gresses onto the next stage of devel­op­ment. National poverty alle­vi­a­tion mea­sures have trig­gered a shift from the issue of regional poverty to struc­tural poverty between the inland and coastal areas, as well as within the urban cities: rapid eco­nomic growth has been loaded with chal­lenges, includ­ing rapid urban­iza­tion and labor migra­tion, demo­graphic pres­sures related to an aging pop­u­la­tion and per­sist­ing pres­sure on estab­lish­ing a func­tion­ing social wel­fare sys­tem. This panel dis­cusses what pol­icy mea­sures are required to address these chal­lenges and help China achieve a sus­tain­able growth? And what lessons does the Chi­nese expe­ri­ence offer about the process of cre­at­ing this mas­sive struc­ture for eco­nomic growth, and how other major emerg­ing coun­tries can tackle their own challenges?

Panel 1 — Finan­cial Ser­vices to the Poor

An esti­mated 78 per­cent of the world’s poor­est do not have a bank account and oper­ate within the cash econ­omy. As the devel­op­ment world gears itself to pro­vide finan­cial ser­vices to this group, the cur­rent tools and mech­a­nisms have to be adapted as well. Where micro­fi­nance once meant the pro­vi­sion of small scale loans, its mean­ing has now evolved to include sav­ings, insur­ance, and other forms of finan­cial ser­vices. This panel will explore these new finan­cial ser­vices in a mul­ti­di­men­sional way; by ascer­tain­ing the needs of the finan­cially excluded, dis­cussing new prod­ucts and ser­vices, and deter­min­ing the effec­tive­ness of these ser­vices through empir­i­cal evidence.

Panel 2 — Har­ness­ing Youth Energy for Development

Devel­op­ing coun­tries and coun­tries in cri­sis (like Spain or Greece today), have often 40 to 60% of youth unem­ploy­ment. Some young peo­ple drop school early, and even uni­ver­sity grad­u­ates can take up to 5 or 6 years to find their first job. This is a human­i­tar­ian dis­as­ter, and can induce insta­bil­ity and vio­lence in some coun­tries (demon­stra­tions, but also crim­i­nal­ity, or polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity). Yet, those youth are a tremen­dous asset for their coun­tries, if we man­age to give them oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve and prove their skills and will to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of their communities.

Panel 1 — Busi­ness Inno­va­tion for Social and Eco­nomic Development

Inno­va­tion is one of the key dri­vers for pri­vate com­pa­nies to live long-term. Inno­va­tion can take the shape of new prod­ucts, new sys­tems or new busi­ness mod­els. With the increased role of Busi­ness in the social arena and devel­op­ment, Inno­va­tion can also be an amaz­ing tool to address social issues and fur­ther coun­tries’ devel­op­ment. A lot of com­pa­nies have tried to develop Inno­va­tions that could for exam­ple help address mal­nu­tri­tion, improve health access or increase liv­ing stan­dards of pop­u­la­tions. This Panel aims to address what are some of the key Inno­va­tion exam­ples (prod­ucts, dis­tri­b­u­tion, sys­tems…) that busi­nesses or public-private part­ner­ships have put in place and that have allowed to sig­nif­i­cantly cre­ate a social improve­ment and helped coun­tries’ development.

Panel 2 — Big Data and Development

Every day, we cre­ate 2.5 quin­til­lion bytes of data — and over 90% of the data in the world today has been cre­ated in the last two years alone. This data comes from every­where: sen­sors used to gather cli­mate infor­ma­tion, posts to social media sites, dig­i­tal pic­tures and videos, pur­chase trans­ac­tion records, and cell phone GPS sig­nals to name a few. The avail­abil­ity of data on human behav­ior is quickly chang­ing how deci­sions are made in the pub­lic sec­tor and in devel­op­ment con­texts. This panel will dis­cuss how Big Data is expected to affect the future of pub­lic pol­icy and how can pol­icy mak­ers lever­age it in achiev­ing devel­op­ment goals?