Get Comfortable: Public-Private-Social Partnerships Are Here to Stay

Get Comfortable: Public-Private-Social Partnerships Are Here to Stay

Deirdre White | June 4th, 2012

An I For Development

Last week I had the opportunity to attend an event at CSIS: Advancing Local Content: Harnessing Business Investment for High Impact Development. The forum was organized to mark the release of the most recent CSIS report, Maximizing Development of Local Content across Industry Sectors in Emerging Markets, which was co-authored by Michael Levett, my predecessor as CEO and current Vice Chair of the Board for CDC Development Solutions.

An excellent panel was moderated by Dan Runde, CSIS Co-Director of the Project on U.S. Leadership in Development, and included Michael Levett, Paul Guennete of ACDI-VOCA, Haymish Paulse of Chevron, Robert Peck of the World Coca Foundation and Littleton Tazewell from USAID. With this mix of public, private and social sector, I knew I was in for a treat. And I was not at all disappointed by the lively discussion on how U.S. businesses can affect development.

As the conversation moved to the audience’s questions and comments, several people remarked on how very far we’ve come in collaboration and understanding between the sectors. I heartily agree, as certainly evidenced by the fact that 90+ percent of CDC Development Solutions’ work is in partnership with and funded by private sector corporations. 

At the same time, the comments gave me pause. In my observation, companies like Chevron and IBM, Pfizer and Pepsi, John Deere and Dow Corning have absolutely changed their relationship to development; there has been nothing short of a sea change in the way these and many, many other global corporations have chosen to engage with the world, in particular with the NGO community. I hearken back to a presentation nearly a decade ago to a large audience of global BP procurement professionals: when we were introduced as an NGO that had valuable information to share, you could almost feel their eyes roll back in their heads, convinced that “NGO” was a code word for “flaky” or “agitator” or both. Not so many years later the very same BP, along with half dozen other companies in the Oil & Gas space, call on us regularly for our expertise on how they can best procure goods and services from local businesses, maximizing the number of a country’s citizens that are able to participate in the resource economy, and contributing to increased competitiveness and economic and social stability.

In terms of how the development community sees the corporate world though, it’s more “pond change” than sea change. Sure, there are a number of forward-thinking NGOs, like ACDI-VOCA, and individuals and offices within the institutional donor agencies that understand and support the engagement of the private sector in development activities. But mostly I hear a lot of lip service and buzz words meant to indicate the openness of traditional development implementers and donors to the role of business, but far less real action. I also too often I hear the opinion professed that NGOs working in partnership with global corporations are there just for “whitewashing” or “greenwashing” purposes, that their (our) good missions are somehow dirtied by their association with big business. 

Likewise, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve spoken about a particularly compelling effort of a corporation—a local content development program, as described in the CSIS paper or an International Corporate Volunteer program, the subject of many articles on our blog pages—and heard the chatter, “but business is benefitting from it—they are doing this in their own interest”. While most utter this phrase with disdain, I declare it with satisfaction that this is the very definition of sustainable programming: if business is benefitting they will continue their efforts. 

And let’s be honest, for 25 years I have written up that dreaded “sustainability section” for donor-funded project proposals, knowing full well with every letter I type that the project has little chance of becoming self-sustaining, and that the priorities and resources of the funding agency will likely change long before we can even begin to speak of real sustainability. Particularly in the context of shifting donor resources and priorities, how can it be a bad thing that business is invested for the long-term and is contributing to the community in a positive way?

Let me be clear that I am in no way defending abhorrent behavior of any business, past or present; likewise I don’t excuse any gross malpractice of development players (the privatization voucher scheme in post-Soviet Russia comes to mind)--all sectors should be accountable for their actions. Rather, I am affirming that the role of business in development is here to stay. It is past time for the ”development community” (a moniker that today should include traditional donor agencies and implementers along with the philanthropic sector, which is often operating in isolation, as well as the corporations who are vested in good development practices) to finally get comfortable with this concept of public-private-social partnership. And I don’t mean just to hold our noses and swallow, but to really get comfortable with what multi-sectoral partnership means:

• We need to learn to speak one another’s language—we so often have a common objective, but simply call it by a different name. (One calls it local content development, a term weighty with free trade implications, while another calls it value chain development, an absolutely acceptable intervention. One calls it risk management, another local economic development. One calls it procurement training, another calls it transparency initiatives.)
• We need to open our minds to see issues and challenges and define success from new perspectives.
• We need to learn to acknowledge and respect one another’s end goals.
• We need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each actor, and take this into account in how we interact for a common good.
• And we need to figure out how to leverage the comparative advantage of each partner—Who can take more risks/attempt more innovation? Who has the financial, human or other resources? Who has the cultural or political context or influence?

I firmly believe we are all moving toward this “comfort zone”, but some are moving with far more strategic vision and speed than others: if we can all figure out how to keep enthusiastic pace, I believe we will use talent, knowledge and resources much more wisely and open the door to a wave of development innovation not seen at any other point in time.

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