International companies have formed Business Action for Africa to build
on the momentum of the Commission for Africa and the recent focus on
the continent at the G8 summit.
The coalition, which has Cisco Systems, De Beers, Marathon Oil, Nestle,
Rio Tinto, SAB Miller, Standard Chartered and Unilever among its 35
founding members, met in London in July with representatives of 330
African and global companies.
After the meeting, the conference chair, Anglo American chairman Sir
Mark Moody-Stuart, issued a seven-page statement which commits the
companies to:
support a rapid expansion of wealth-creating small and medium-sized
enterprises in Africa ‘through a combination of equity, commercial
loans, access to procurement opportunities and mentoring’
invest more in the prevention and treatment of HIV and Aids in workforces and communities
be
‘uncompromising’ on corruption, partly by giving more details of
contract arrangements and ‘ensuring disclosure through codes of
conduct’.
A particular focus will be collaborative action by companies in the same sector.
However, its declared aim of ‘making a contribution towards the
achievement of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals’, under
which UN member countries commit to deadlines for reducing poverty and
disease over the next 15 years, has been complicated by a US proposal
to remove any reference to the goals from a draft agreement on poverty
reduction and human rights due to be signed this month by 175 heads of
state. The intervention by US ambassador John Bolton, which came to
light in a document leaked at the end of last month, takes a tougher
line than the US Administration’s public position, which is that the
section on poverty is too long.
Moody-Stuart said that in the coming months Business Action for Africa
members would seek to ‘mobilize the voice of the private sector in
maintaining interest in the work of the Commission for Africa’. This
body was established last year by the British prime minister Tony
Blair. Its final report, published in March, recommended that a
$100million (£55m) Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund be established for
small firms and expansion of the Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative to cover forestry and fishing.
The commission has supported the creation of Business Action for
Africa, and Blair, who is also the G8 president, attended the initial
conference in London.
While the coalition advocates that businesses work with governments and
non-governmental organizations to tackle poverty in Africa, it
emphasizes that ‘a continuing reduction in the numbers of people living
in poverty can only be achieved through the strengthening of the
private sector and the efficient operation of market economies’.
The coalition is open to all businesses and business organizations.
There is no joining fee, but members are expected to show what they are
doing, or intending to do, in support.
