MENA leaders sign unique roadmap for stakeholder capitalism ahead of World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit

10x Industry

Mita Srinivasan
10x Industry
Published:

MENA leaders sign unique roadmap for stakeholder capitalism ahead of World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit

This roadmap advocates the importance of public-private collaboration across

A group of senior decision-makers from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including leaders from government, business and civil society, signed the Principles of Stakeholder Capitalism for the Middle East and North Africa, designed to inform an inclusive, sustainable and resilient recovery for the region.

Regional leaders are advocating a shared vision for stakeholder capitalism that advocates the importance of public-private collaboration and includes the following action points:

  • Crafting inclusive economic policies and a new social contract

  • Stimulating economic integration

  • Reshaping education systems

  • Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution

  • Promoting environmental sustainability

  • Mitigating global health risks

  • Committing to good and agile governance

Signatories are members of the World Economic Forum’s Regional Action Group on the Middle East and North Africa, which the Forum created in April 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Top-level members of government, business and civil society convene monthly during virtual meetings with the aim of developing action-oriented initiatives and projects that strengthen the region’s resilience for the post-COVID-19 era. Driven by their conviction that companies and governments need to have a larger societal role, the signatories believe that the shared vision and language will serve as a guiding framework to steer collaboration.

The Regional Action Group on the MENA will offer a platform for projects and initiatives that emerge from these principles, with the aim of scaling them up and replicating them throughout the region.

The principles have been released ahead of the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit, which aims to scale up solutions to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of our time.

Abdulla Bin Touq, Minister of Economy of the United Arab Emirates, said: “The Regional Action Group is one of the most important multilateral and regionally focused platforms where policy-makers and private-sector decision-makers can come together to share their views, allowing them to push some of the major regional priorities into the domain of actionable projects.” According to Bin Touq, it “represent the building blocks for all of us to actively work together in addressing the challenges brought by COVID-19 and to make headway on the economic prosperity of MENA.”