AMBITION | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY
TACKLING POVERTY
studying business administration at RSM, the study was mainly about corporate issues and business case studies. Now, it seems natural for these students to think about complex social issues.’ Complexity, and the difficulty of eradicating poverty altogether, were recurring themes in students’ feedback from the three-week project. ‘Everyone has an opinion on poverty, and all of those opinions diverge in their definitions of the concept, the root causes and the potential solutions. That's what makes poverty so hard to understand… We learned that there's no one-shot solution at poverty,’ said RSM student, Sander van der Neut, whose team sought to reduce the number of young people repeating a year of secondary school. ‘I truly hope that this course changed their idea of inequality in the Netherlands, and that it will have a permanent impact on their way of thinking and future decision making,’ said van Gerven. / Tim Banerjee Dhoul (TBD)
COUNTRY: NETHERLANDS SCHOOL: ROTTERDAM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Student proposals as part of a master’s project offer actionable advice to reduce poverty among young people in the Netherlands and help meet UN SDG number 1 – to address poverty in all its forms everywhere. Working in teams of five, 39 proposals were presented as pitches, of which several focused on education programmes that seek to prepare children for adulthood by teaching subjects such as financial education and citizenship. The project is the culmination of the MSc Global Business and Sustainability at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
(RSM) – a programme that focuses on the effective integration of sustainability into a business’ core operations. Tasked with drawing up viable solutions to reduce poverty among young adults in the Netherlands by 50% by 2030, students engaged with SDG 1 Alliantie – a consortium of partners from the government, the business community, civil society organisations and science in the Netherlands – and conducted interviews with different stakeholders. Marjolijn van Gerven, who is the National Co-ordinator for SDG 1 Alliantie, said: ‘20 years ago, when I was
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SHIFTING THE FOCUS OF AFRICA’S FINANCE INDUSTRY
Naidoo, Co-Founder of the RFI along with the former head of the Alexander Forbes Research Institute, Anne Cabot-Alletzhauser. ‘The RFI's intention is to produce practical, replicable, and implementable solutions for measuring and reporting impact, enhancing the asset allocation framework for investors looking to deploy capital along with risk, return and impact frontier, and ultimately provide solutions to fill any funding gaps in capital market mechanisms. This will require a dual but integrating focus between macro and micromechanisms,’ Naidoo continued. While the principles of the RFI model are founded on the UN SDGs, the founders believe that before environmental goals can be addressed, there needs to be a focus on equality, stability, and economic practices. The RFI intends, therefore, to make changes with longevity and sustainability in mind for long-term regeneration, with effective self-determination and governance in Africa being central to its development. One challenge associated with this initiative is to find development solutions for all of Africa, despite the differences in financial ecosystems found across the continent. The aim is therefore not to undermine the existing work of national and global stakeholders, but to help these to work in alignment, using an African lens to produce solutions. / Ellen Buchan (EB)
COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA SCHOOL: GORDON INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS SCIENCE
The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria, has launched a Responsible Finance Initiative (RFI) that will centre on a collaborative model for public, private and civic sectors across Africa. Its aim is to better link capital to the means of production, labour and technology, and ultimately shift the focus of the region’s financial services industry towards being more relevant and responsible to the needs of Africans. GIBS is the, ‘ideal platform for the RFI‘ because ‘it balances academic soundness with robust practice,’ according to Deslin
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