By Emmanuel Faber, CEO of Danone
Emmanuel Faber participated in the
2017 International Economic Forum on Latin America and the Caribbean
In 1972, Danone founder Antoine Riboud made a speech to French industry leaders in which he declared that “corporate responsibility doesn’t end at the factory gate or the company door” and called on them to place “industry at the service of people.” Today his words seem self-evident; at the time they were revolutionary.
Now more than ever, we know that we can only thrive as a business when people and planet thrive. It’s simple: If we don’t protect the environment, we won’t be able to secure resources to make our products. If we don’t empower people and support decent living conditions, our supplier and consumer bases will shrink. We cannot escape this interdependence. So, at Danone, we embrace it. This means that, wherever we operate, we work to foster inclusive and sustainable development through co-creation — that is, working with coalitions of actors on the ground to develop hybrid solutions to concrete problems.
Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require very large investments measured in the trillions until 2030. To mobilise such amounts, policy makers try to crowd-in the private sector, its financial resources and its entrepreneurial creativity. But private sector engagement will not happen if risk-adjusted returns are perceived to be unattractive. While telecom and mobile banking have shown that achieving development goals also means good business, perceived risks in most other sectors and countries are still too high for expected economic returns.
Fiscal space is big right now. It was an important part of the 
UNV Cambodia May 31, 2016
L’Afrique n’est pas différente des autres continents : le dynamisme économique africain repose comme ailleurs en très grande partie sur les PME. La nouvelle classe d’entrepreneurs africains ayant émergé depuis dix à vingt ans apporte avec audace et innovation des réponses durables aux besoins d’un continent dont les économies sont encore fragiles.
Industrialisation is a key driver of sustainable development. It creates jobs, adds value and promotes trade through greater integration into global value chains. At the same time, entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are critical to every economy by creating jobs and innovative goods, promoting a competitive environment and economic growth, and facilitating income distribution. The South African government recognises the need for entrepreneurship and SMEs’ engagement with industrialisation efforts to address some of the key socio-economic challenges in the country, particularly poverty, inequality and unemployment. However, South African entrepreneurs 