Insights from the Local Private Sector Session

Session 6: Local Private Sector

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The International Cooperation Forum Switzerland hosted Session 6 focusing on the role of the local private sector as a catalyst for sustainable development. Moderated by Christian Frutiger, the discussion highlighted the critical role small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play in economic growth globally. Entrepreneurs shared their challenges and successes in aligning business interests with solutions to societal problems, particularly in agriculture and finance sectors. Participants emphasized the importance of regulatory environments, access to finance, and the need for collaboration with international communities to leverage the local private sector's potential. Concluding remarks focused on the vision for local businesses to thrive in the future, fostering resilience and inclusivity.

Highlights

Sophia Bamang's innovative solutions empower Nepali farmers with storage technology. 🌾
Niket Boh's EA Equipment Leasing improves agricultural productivity in Tanzania. 🚜
Swiss Contact emphasized vocational training to enhance competitiveness. 💪
Impact investors focus on long-term growth and sustainable impact. 🌱
Panelists envision robust local businesses driving future economic growth. 🔮

Key Takeaways

Local private sector is crucial for sustainable development. 🌿
Entrepreneurs face challenges like regulation and finance access. 💼
SMEs drive innovation and job creation globally. 🌍
Strategic partnerships enhance impact in local markets. 🤝
Investments should focus on knowledge and capacity building. 📚

Overview

Session 6 at the International Cooperation Forum Switzerland delved into the pivotal role of local private sectors in driving sustainable development. These sessions underscored that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are fundamental to economic growth across various regions, including Africa and Asia. Through their innovative approaches, SMEs not only address local problems but also stimulate broader economic vitality.

Entrepreneurs from Nepal and Tanzania shared their success stories and challenges. Sophia Bamang discussed her work with Nepali farmers, introducing technology that dramatically reduces post-harvest losses, improving both income and market conditions for local farmers. Meanwhile, Niket Boh illustrated how leasing farm equipment has transformed agricultural efficiency and productivity in Tanzania, highlighting the importance of creating an inclusive and supportive regulatory environment.

The session wrapped up with a forward-looking discussion on fostering a resilient local private sector. Panelists expressed hopes for increased investment in local businesses to drive sustainable growth, emphasizing the necessity of strategic partnerships and a focus on long-term development and inclusivity in the global market. The members of the panel reflected on how, through collaborated efforts, vibrant local economies can be realized in the forthcoming decade.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter, titled 'Introduction and Welcome,' begins with a warm welcome to attendees of a session, both in Zurich and online. It mentions the return from a coffee break where participants enjoyed a great croissant. The focus of the session is highlighted as a discussion on the local private sector, emphasizing its importance as a backbone for economic development.
00:30 - 05:00: Session Overview by Christian Frutiger This chapter, led by Christian Frutiger, provides an overview of a session focused on the role and importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in driving economic growth and development globally. Emphasizing their impact, from Switzerland to countries across Africa and Asia, the session underscores the critical function SMEs serve in economic advancement across various regions.
05:00 - 09:00: Introduction of Panelists and Entrepreneurs Chapter Title Introduction of Panelists and Entrepreneurs
09:00 - 17:00: Sopia Shares Business Experience in Nepal This chapter discusses the role of individuals who understand cultural sensitivities and address societal needs in Nepal. These individuals often support the weaker sections of society, benefiting the poor by responding to their demands. The chapter also touches on the challenges faced in this context.
17:00 - 25:00: Philip Discusses the Role of Economic Transformation The chapter titled 'Philip Discusses the Role of Economic Transformation' focuses on the discussion led by Philip about the essential elements needed for local entrepreneurs to thrive. Key topics include the importance of having a supportive regulatory environment and ensuring access to finance and necessary resources. The chapter aims to explore both opportunities and challenges faced by the local private sector, with an objective to gather insights from entrepreneurs.
25:00 - 35:00: Nikomed on Leasing Agricultural Equipment in Tanzania The chapter introduces a discussion on leasing agricultural equipment in Tanzania, featuring Nikomed and other entrepreneurs. The focus is on innovation and digitalization within the sector. The chapter includes live panels with entrepreneurs both online and in-person, aiming to present their insights and experiences. Additionally, it considers the role of the international community in supporting these initiatives.
35:00 - 44:00: Andreas on Philanthropic Impact Investing The chapter details a moderated panel discussion hosted by Andreas focusing on the role of international donors in enhancing the potential of the private sector through philanthropic impact investing. The panel includes both physically present and online guests and encourages participation from the audience through an interactive platform, allowing them to ask and rank questions.
44:00 - 53:00: Sopia on Challenges and Support in Nepal The chapter discusses the role of the local private sector in emergency settings and humanitarian contexts. The speaker indicates that detailed questions will be asked directly, and participants are encouraged to consider and share their ideas on how the local private sector can contribute effectively in such scenarios.
53:00 - 61:00: Philip on Skills Development and Competitiveness The chapter 'Philip on Skills Development and Competitiveness' begins with a description of an upcoming Q&A session, indicating the presence of a microphone and roaming microphones. The chapter highlights the symbolic nature of the 'microphone for political will' during difficult discussions or negotiations. However, the chapter notes that this isn't the scenario at present, implying a different focus for the session.
61:00 - 66:00: Nikomed on Encouraging Private Sector Investment The chapter begins with an introduction to a panel discussion on encouraging private sector investment, featuring panelist Sophia Bamanga, an entrepreneur from Kathmandu, Nepal. The conversation is just beginning as participants check their audio connections to ensure everyone can hear and be heard clearly.
66:00 - 76:00: Andreas on Ensuring Additionality in Impact Investing The chapter titled 'Andreas on Ensuring Additionality in Impact Investing' begins with Andreas expressing gratitude for being present and acknowledging the audience. Before diving into questions, a video is played to introduce Andreas and his company. The video showcases how the company empowers farmers with innovative post-harvest solutions, specifically modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) bags. These MAP bags are designed to reduce post-harvest losses, and farmers have reported experiencing up to a 50% reduction in such losses by using these bags.
76:00 - 89:30: Discussion on Local Demand vs. Global Value Chains The chapter discusses the impact of aligning local agricultural demand with global value chains. It highlights a significant increase in farmers' income, ranging from 20-30%, due to improved market access. This financial stability has enabled better business management among farmers, allowing them flexibility in deciding when and at what price to sell their produce, countering traders' pricing pressures.
89:30 - 104:00: Q&A Session - Slido Questions In the chapter titled 'Q&A Session - Slido Questions', the discussion focuses on the benefits that are provided to farmers through the use of storage bags. These bags help extend the shelf life of produce by one or two days, granting farmers better negotiating power. They are less vulnerable to exploitation and can consider alternative markets, freeing them from dependence on a single market. The initiative has successfully reached over 3,000 farmers.
104:00 - 119:00: Role of Local Private Sector in Humanitarian Settings This chapter discusses the involvement and impact of over 200 micro SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) in humanitarian settings. The speaker, a CEO of a post office management company, expresses pride in this achievement. Another key contributor, Niket Nikomed Boh from EA Equipment Leasing in Tanzania, is welcomed to join the discussion live from Dar es Salaam. The chapter highlights the essential role played by the local private sector, including SMEs, in enhancing humanitarian efforts and outcomes.
119:00 - 129:00: Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook The concluding chapter highlights the essential role played by small and medium agricultural businesses in Eastern Africa. These enterprises are pivotal for job creation and income enhancement in the region. Despite their importance, accessing financial support remains a significant hurdle primarily due to lenders perceiving the agricultural sector as highly risky due to its traditionally low returns. The chapter likely addresses possible solutions and future opportunities to overcome these financial access barriers, although this part is not detailed in the provided transcript.

Session 6: Local Private Sector Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 excellencies ladies and gentlemen welcome back for those in the in in Zurich welcome back from the coffee break I know the coffee break is great with a great croissant and I think there are still a few people will be coming back uh welcome also to all of you um online to this session number six so we'll be talking about the local private sector the local private sector as a backbone for
00:30 - 01:00 prosperity it's my pleasure to guide you through this session my name is Christian frutiger I had thematic cooperation at the Swiss Agency for development and cooperation so small medium-sized Enterprises are really the driving force for economic growth and economic development in any country in Switzerland in Africa in Asia anywhere
01:00 - 01:30 in the world the private sector creates nine out of 10 jobs anywhere in the world and entrepreneurs not only stand for Innovation and we saw uh with a few of the entrepreneurs uh over the last two days uh how they solve real societal problems with commercial Solutions not only do they innovate they drive economic development but they know the local context they know the local needs
01:30 - 02:00 they know the cultural sensitivities and they know how to address uh these uh these needs and they also very often are the ones who uh take care of uh the weakest parts of society and so their activities uh benefit the poor they know the demand and the respond to uh the to the demand however we've also seen what is difficult for
02:00 - 02:30 local entrepreneurs is to have the necessary uh regulatory environment to have access uh to finance uh often access uh to the necessary uh uh to the necessary uh capacity so today would we would like to unpack some of the opportunities but also of the challenges of the local private sector two-fold objective gain insights from entrepreneurs
02:30 - 03:00 directly and we have a few very interesting entrepreneurs here online and physically so uh we have talked a lot about uh Innovation and digitalization so we'll see if the the live uh panel uh with two uh panelists uh online actually uh works well so we will hear uh from uh the entrepreneurs directly and then we'll also look at what can the international Community
03:00 - 03:30 what can International uh donors do to help unlock the potential of the private sector so we'll do this in a moderated panel with two guests here and two online and of course an interactive discussion with you all you have uh I think you have either already had or you will have uh a slido QR code where you can ask your questions um the questions uh you can then uh rank them and uh the highest
03:30 - 04:00 ranking questions will be uh asked directly I will also I already tell you that now I will also turn to you in the room um with a very particular question and I already give you that question now it will be about the role of the local private sector in emergency settings and humanitarian contexts so if any of you uh has idea ideas on how this question
04:00 - 04:30 could be answered um I will turn to you uh towards the end in the Q in the Q&A session and there's a microphone here there are also roaming microphones often when there a microphone is there's a microphone that stands alone uh one is wondering what it does uh we used to say in difficult discussions or difficult negotiations it's the microphone for political will and when it manifests itself uh it is open uh this is not the case today uh today uh we I just have a
04:30 - 05:00 fairly simple question to you all but let's now turn to our panelists I will introduce them uh one by one one by one first starting with Sophia Sophia bamang um who is an entrepreneur who joins us from Katmandu in Nepal sopia can you hear us yes sir yes sir I can hear you wonderful and I can hear you very well welcome uh to zurk good afternoon
05:00 - 05:30 good afternoon thank you I'm so honored to be here we will before uh we uh we'll ask you a few questions we will start with a video that actually introduces you and your company so the video thank you at melesh uh we Empower Farmers with Innovative was Harvest Solutions like modified atmosphere packaging which we call as map bags with map bags Farmers have reported that they've experienced up to 50% reduction in post Harvest
05:30 - 06:00 losses meaning More Produce have reached the market fresh at the same time they have also told us that they have increased the income by 20 to 30% which means there there have been a greater Financial stability but most important part that have been is they've been able to manage their business in a better terms so now uh let's say for example if the farmers are not ready to sell that day if the farmers are not willing to the price that the Traders are willing
06:00 - 06:30 to pay they are in a better negotiation term because they can now store their produce in our bags and extend the shelf life for one or two days they can actually say that no I I'm not willing to pay that price no I'm not going I'm not willing to be exploited by you or at the same time they are uh they can also explore distant or Alternative Market and not be dependent on the same market so MERS have successfully been able to reach to more than 3,000 plus Farmers
06:30 - 07:00 more than 200 micr smes Andes which makes me very proud as a CEO of a post office management company thank you very much Sophia please yes thanks for the Applause let me now turn to niket nikomed Boh from EA equipment leasing in Tanzania you join us live from Dar Salam welcome comment
07:00 - 07:30 can you hear us thank you Christian yes Christian thank you pleased to be here wonderful we also have a short video clip uh to introduce uh nikomed and his company small and medium agricultural businesses play a crucial role in creating jobs and increasing incomes in Eastern Africa however accessing Finance remains a significant challenge why many lenders perceive agriculture as too risky with with low
07:30 - 08:00 returns that's where aell Africa agricultural Enterprises lending incentives makes a difference asally is a mission-driven platform dedicated to transforming the lives of farmers and Rural communities across East Africa by facilitating loans to small and medium Agri businesses aseli helps Advance food security climate resilience gender equality and opportunities for youth since its Inception in 2020 aeli and its
08:00 - 08:30 lending Partners have impacted the lives of 1.3 million Farmers nearly half of whom are women while creating 43,000 jobs a standout example of ael's impact is its partnership with EA equipment financing Tanzania a company that leases farm equipment such as tractors and processing machines with ael's support EA has quadrupled its agricultural loans in just 3 years reaching businesses in previously underserved remote areas for
08:30 - 09:00 Farmers this means access to better tools New Opportunities and brighter Futures aseli Africa is demonstrating that investing in agriculture has the power to transform lives thank you thank you niket thank you uh EA and let me let me now turn uh
09:00 - 09:30 let me now introduce our distinguished panelists who are here in the room first Philip schy CEO of Swiss contact UM Swiss contact uh Swiss contact beliefs in private initiative and systemic change and your key focus is on strengthening the skills of individuals and Foster competitive comp competitiveness of uh businesses and the second uh panelist here in the room andas kle who is the
09:30 - 10:00 CEO of ala foundation and the Ala Foundation stands for impact through entrepreneurship and promotes philanthropic impact in westkan war welcome to you all now let me turn uh to sopia with a first with the first question how do you uh sopia align business interests with your focus on
10:00 - 10:30 reducing food loss and building sustainable agricultural Supply chains uh thank you for the question so so uh at Montel refresh uh we align our business interest with reducing food loss which accounts to 40% in Nepal which in average by creating value for both farmers and consumers our approach is centered on empowering rural Farmers
10:30 - 11:00 integrating lowcost Technologies processing Surplus produce and improving overall supply chain efficiency by making sure consumers are paying reasonable price for the produce so firstly what we do is we focus on making lowcost and easy to ous Technologies which is accessible to Farmers as the biggest challenge in agriculture is post Harvest losses due to perishability and in case of Nepal because of hills and mountains the
11:00 - 11:30 geography equally poses as a challenge so we help farmers extend the shelf life of their produce through apportable practical Technologies such as mbag which you just saw in the video and allowing them to store process and strategically Market their products even though the market is distant so secondly what we do is we provide uh sorry we Empower rural Farmers by providing Equitable distant Market many farmers in Nepal have historically
11:30 - 12:00 been de dependent on exploitative Traders and uh limited market opportunities so to address this we directly Source from Farmers ensuring they receive fair prices and are integrated into a structured transparent supplies and additionally we tackle food loss through processing non-marketable and surplus produce so no matter how much we try to reduce the loss we've realized that there are non-marketable
12:00 - 12:30 Commodities which is never which which we can we could never sell so what we do with them is we've started to uh process those produce into puries or juice or dry products and additionally we tackle food loss to process sorry uh uh I'm so sorry I'm so sorry so uh moreover we work towards a more efficient and resilient Supply Chain by addressing food loss at the farm level promoting
12:30 - 13:00 improved storage and handling practices and enhancing a market linkages which we ensure a consistent and sustainable supply of high quality produce thank you thank you thank you Sophia um investing in agriculture and and reducing food loss and in and and and waste in in in in agriculture is one of the areas which is really under invested uh globally in in
13:00 - 13:30 in many countries what what brought you to actually work in this business what happened with us is I'm so sorry you were asking me the question right yes yes so uh what happened with us is during covid what we realized was there was massive food loss because of the interprovincial transfer in Nepal so myself I'm a person some somebody from Hospitality at that time so what
13:30 - 14:00 happened is I realized that there was a dire need to address this food loss that happens after the farm gate and because of that loss what we've realized is the consumers were paying higher prices while at the same time farmers were not getting better prices so that's when we thought that what we can do as a young people as you know in Nepal there is a massive brain drain of youths so what
14:00 - 14:30 we've started what we thought was uh maybe we could bring technologies that could not that is not that is at the same time uh lowc cost but at the same time it's easy to use to our Farmers which eventually took us quite quite a time but yes we are hanging in there and convincing our Farmers to introduce to and convince them to use these Technologies excellent thank you very much let me now turn to to you Philip um
14:30 - 15:00 from Swiss contact so why does it matter well it's an obvious question but I still ask it to you why does it matter to transform the economy to bring about sustainable development so first of all thank you for having me here um I think um we had a very compelling welcoming session yesterday in opening ceremony where the director general made a compelling case uh of the of the wtto made a compelling case on why it is need necessary to grow
15:00 - 15:30 I think we believe that the growth of the the private sector is really the driving force of growth and unfortunately there is still a lot of poverty in the world I think according to the World Bank there is around um for 44% of the people are still living in poverty 700 million in extreme poverty so we need um Economic Development to bring these people out of poverty now the issue is uh in my my feeling is that unfortunately we don't have much time so uh Economic Development needs to be
15:30 - 16:00 quick and not only that it needs to be environmentally sustainable and it needs to be inclusive uh these are the three preconditions in my understanding um that we need to fulfill and this requires economic transformation so we cannot just take the same road that we took in Europe where 200 years ago industrialization uh um started and we kind of took it took us 200 years to get 200 years to get to the place where we are now it must be much quicker because I think according to the predictions
16:00 - 16:30 about 700 um jobs need to be created in Africa alone until 2050 because of this huge vast young population so we need it to happen quickly and we need to you know transfer technology also for the environmental reason we cannot have the same type of development with polluting technologies that we used for example in in Africa and the inclusiveness part is very important because we have seen countries grow massively uh at the macroeconomic level but you
16:30 - 17:00 have always have people left behind so I think this is the issue now um how does this economic transformation uh need to take place I think um the the um the vision that I have that was also shared Yesterday by the director general of the WTO is that we need to have a a transformation so to say from a resource-based economy uh in these developing countries to an economy that is much more based on not knowledge because knowledge allows people to add
17:00 - 17:30 to have a more interesting job and therefore also get a salary that is more interesting and how does this uh can this happen we need to to have specialization of the economy we need to direct economic uh transformation into Niche markets we probably need to add scale and we certainly need to um uh to create new businesses I think this is your topic Andreas and um the interesting question for me was when I prepared for this panel was what is Switzerland's uh role in all of this
17:30 - 18:00 right and I think um and I have said it on other occasions and I I want to repeat it here I think Switzerland can share much more than just money we should not just send money and then reinvent wheel on the ground I think we should invest into knowledge transfer and I I want to make a point here also that it is not only linked to individual businesses because competitiveness is not just the competitiveness of an individual business you always need uh good uh Distributors you need suppliers
18:00 - 18:30 and so on that are also competitive this is why we are talking about competitive spaces competitive sectors uh clusters and so on so if we want to increase competitiveness of these industries uh we need to do it with a systemic View and that requires transformation not only of knowledge and Technology on the individual company level but also for the whole let's say the whole sector and here Switzerland has a lot to share a lot to share when you think of all these public private Corporation spaces that
18:30 - 19:00 we have in terms of innovation of startup promotion and so on so I think the role of international corporation of Switzerland should really focus also on knowledge transfer and transfer of these experiences thank you thank you uh Philip let me now turn to to nikomed uh nikomed you you um lease out um agricultural um machines and and uh equipment um it's quite a a transformative uh idea and can you
19:00 - 19:30 explain a little bit uh how this how this works and uh what role uh your uh company has played in uh transforming agriculture towards um more development sustainable development thank you Christian and again please to be here uh EA is part uh of the E Africa group uh with a mission to provide productive
19:30 - 20:00 equipment uh to productive sectors and agriculture is on top of our priority as you have seen in the intro email uh you have seen tractors Harvesters and AGR processing equipment so we provide these kind of equipments uh under the lease Finance without any underlying without any additional collateral the only collateral is actually the underlying equipment and and through that approach uh this
20:00 - 20:30 has been accessible and affordable to to most of the rural communities so by providing this kind of equipments if if if we take a simple example of a tractor you provide mechanization in the agricult in agriculture for the rural farmers and small older farmers and that brings in efficiency and at the end of the day with the work of other partners in seeds fertilizers and good agricultural practices you end up with a high yields uh from these communities which
20:30 - 21:00 transform translates to higher income uh but in the process of providing this kind of equipments we create jobs uh you you basically need to a tractor operator that is a full-time job uh and then with the high uh with high yields you also create uh food security for the community and the country as in general but to the farmer that has actually access the
21:00 - 21:30 tractor uh it also means higher improved income so in general all this add up to the improved livelihoods in the rural communities just to put that into perspective uh up to year 2024 we have delivered about 4,000 equipments uh across rural communities in Tanzania and created and maintain over 10,000 jobs now coming back to the the second part of your question on on
21:30 - 22:00 entrepreneurship how does this bring how does how does this actually promote entrepreneurship in the rural communities what we have seen some of the unintended uh outcomes emergence of service sector in the in the rural communities and suddenly uh there is a need to move the agricultural produce from the rural communities to Urban centers and we provide other sort of equipments like trucks you've seen trucks on the on the on the video but also on the last mile to the to the
22:00 - 22:30 urban kiosks this like the three-wheelers these kind of equipments but in the rural communities we have seen emergency of the service sector the mechanics so there's been a lot of entrepreneural activity happening in the rural setting because of this kind of interventions this has not been possible without working with many actors in the ecosystem we work with suppliers of this equipment who provide technical support to every farmer that uh we don't know anything about the the mechanics of a
22:30 - 23:00 tractor or truck or any agricultural equipment so and they provide this on a commercial relationship as after sales service to make it to make sure it works but uh uh I'll have to mention now the working with Partners like Asel Africa supported by Swiss Agency for development cooperation that enabl us to reach to some very rural uh areas that we are out of bound uh with the resources that we
23:00 - 23:30 had and also through this kind of Partnerships we have actually created uh a lot of rich and impact thank you thank you thank you very much niked uh let me now turn to to Andreas philanthropic Capital philanthropic impact investment how do you do you contribute to create entrepreneurial ecosystems at the local level first thank you also from my side for for having me and thank you for
23:30 - 24:00 having this panel about uh this important topic how we can strengthen and for the private sector even uh sometimes under difficult circumstances um the let me answer the question about uh philanthropic impact investing starting by impact investors themselves what is the role of impact investors I think over the last decade we really saw that they developed into this important role to provide money and financing for local
24:00 - 24:30 entrepreneurs providing local solutions to local problems and impact investors do this with a perspective on this famous triangle return impact and risk especially also watching the ratio of risk return and here we come to the point where I think philanthropic impact investing becomes uh interesting philanthropic impact investing chump in at areas where we have a strong impact
24:30 - 25:00 we have companies delivering towards business success over time but the risk return ratio might be not at a level where the classical impact investors would expect it as it developed over time impact investors are looking more and more for more mature companies they have if you want more private Equity mindset so coming in post Revenue definitely post profit for the long-term
25:00 - 25:30 development and growth of the company while we would say that philanthropic impact investors are needed before that if you want to compare again we would say we we we are kind of in the Venture Capital Niche with the only distinction that we don't have this famous exits vure capitalists hope to have which one successful companies which uh through one the success of one successful company then helps to finance all the others who who don't get there so this
25:30 - 26:00 is then also the answer why this needs to be philanthropic philanthropic impact investors focus on impact first deal in areas where you invest in companies who have a long-term perspective to be successful to be profitable to grow steadily and to provide therefore sustainable impact but are not yet there for different reasons first reason as I said is majority of the sector other reasons might be vulner vulnerability of the sector difficulties of the things
26:00 - 26:30 they're focusing on and then the challenges also Philip mentioned already there are a lot of factors playing in if you start a company now um as we heard from sopia for example under difficult uh in a difficult frame and a difficult setting and also you have to say in a background where you really focus on impacting people in a positive way and let me use the example of ala now what
26:30 - 27:00 we what what we are doing concretely is we invest in local entrepreneurs trying to find local solutions to local problems who focus on alleviating poverty in their communities and this is a very specific Focus um a clear goal and with this goal it's very important for us to support them from the very beginning of the journey I would say when the end the early growth phase not
27:00 - 27:30 only with capital but also with knowledge we also see and again this is a parallel to the Venture Capital sphere you have the startup feere there's a lot of hype a lot of excitement that's great you start your idea you go out in the market you test a lot of things your first successes you learn your first lessons and then if you're successful and survive this stage then comes the critical phase of you want to grow and then Venture capitalists also call this uh the value of this um then comes the
27:30 - 28:00 lack of capital and very often also the lack of experience how to manage the complexity of organizational growth and of business growth and that's exactly where we think we would need more players to jump in which are willing to take a higher risk but also with a higher lever on the success side if we help companies go through this phase successfully then we really contribute to the development of the private sector
28:00 - 28:30 even under difficult circumstances thank you so Finance but also knowledge transfer and support as we hear as we heard from from both of you um uh Sophia I'll I'll I'll turn to you again yesterday you know on this topic of of of support mentoring and and uh Finance um yesterday on on the Africa panel um um one of the entrepreneurs uh
28:30 - 29:00 said something quite uh impressive uh she said you know women in Africa are over mentored and underfinanced so female entrepreneurs are over mentored and underfinanced hopelessly underfinanced and then she added and patronized um how how is uh the situation in in in Nepal so have you had
29:00 - 29:30 access to uh support to financial support but also other uh types of support and uh if not what would need to happen uh thank you for the question again so uh when it comes to Nepal business ecosystem for entrepreneurs it is still in a gradual development offering both opportunities and challenges while certain support structures such as incubators or government initiatives or donor funded
29:30 - 30:00 programs or financial institutions are in place which support uh and micro smmes or women entrepreneurs but there's significant hinder or barriers which actually stops the entrepreneur growth you know among these are limited access to finance one of the pressing concern as you as I just mentioned and uh at the same time uh whenever we go to the financing sectors there is a high collateral requirements making it more
30:00 - 30:30 difficult for entrepreneurs to secure affordable financing and furthermore alternative funding sources include venture capital or impact investment are still in a very early stages restricting avenues for business expansion for us and at the same time there is infrastructure constants further exasperating the challenges faced by businesses particularly those engaged in agriculture so poor management of let's
30:30 - 31:00 say for example in our country there is poor management of existing infrastructures or unreliable networks or inefficient supply chain system contribute substantial losses impeding scalability and operational efficiency so uh despite these challenges Nepal does offer or we do get offer growing support system for on entrepreneurs and especially development
31:00 - 31:30 organizations or non-g government organization play a crucial role in providing funding training and capacity building programs and in our company uh we have successfully navigated this ecosystem by leveraging donors and NGO programs to obtain grants and technical assistance so one of our most influential supporters and I cannot be I cannot uh Express this enough has been the
31:30 - 32:00 Swiss government to uh Grant uh named Nepal agriculture Market development program uh which is implemented by Swiss contact uh played a pivotal role in our initial phase in fact they were our first donors somebody who trusted in the beginning enabling us uh to uh link to Farmers understand the problem and at the same time help help us develop a sustainable supply chain if I have to
32:00 - 32:30 say they actually handheld and worked walked with us together and um I would want to extend a sincere appreciation to Swiss contact for their invaluable support which actually helped us to reduce the food loss in supply chain and for example like uh we mentioned earlier it is just not the fund but it's also the technical assistance that's required in country like ours and their assistance in conducting commercial
32:30 - 33:00 trials under real times conditions with various supply chain actors have been so instrumental uh and I just want to take an opportunity to say that I am immensely honored to be in the panelist with along with the CEO of Swiss contact as I have witnessed the firsthand transformative impact that such a support can have in business businesses like ours so in
33:00 - 33:30 addition to this uh we collaborate with various research institutions to introduce cost cost effective scalable Solutions aimed at minimizing Solutions sorry food loss and recognizing these persistent challenges associated with access to formal financing uh we are actively exploring alternative funding resources including impact investors crowdfunding and strategic Partnerships to sustain and expand our operations so while concluding you know uh
33:30 - 34:00 entrepreneur ecosystem continues to evolve in ours uh unlocking is full full potential requires more targeted interventions particularly in financing infrastructure development and policy reforms and addressing these critical gaps is essential for fostering sustainable and as an sustainable sorry sustainable growth and as an entrepreneur I remain optimistic and proactive in navigating these challenges thanks Sophia well since you mentioned
34:00 - 34:30 the COO of Swiss contact you seem to do a few things fairly well um so me my colleag yes so what do you do how do you uh in invest in in in skills in skills development and uh you know how do you um um how would you then also Ensure that uh this really uh leads to
34:30 - 35:00 competitiveness and and and growth ultimately competitiveness of the businesses and growth ultimately so um I think there are two two main elements we we understand that we work in Market systems and that means that on the one hand we always or mostly work with private sector companies um because you cannot introduce any solution if it's not demand oriented you need to understand where the demand is otherwise the money if it's off driven and we see that unfortunately all too often if it's
35:00 - 35:30 offer driven it will not do the trick right so it needs to be demand oriented and usually the demand is a private sector company it's not always the consumer often times it's a private sector if you're seeing value chains and so on so we need to involve these companies and in fact we have we count that since a couple of years ago last year we had over 1,100 um formal Partnerships with local private sector companies in our projects we work in around 140 projects in 40 count so you can imagine over 10 formal
35:30 - 36:00 Partnerships with private partners and these are Partners not beneficiaries partners that support the project and that applies to skills development because you cannot train people without uh the com or develop competencies that are required and that also applies to um development I think this is one um one thing the other thing is related to what I said before um about um understanding Market systems sectors and understanding the the root causes of the problems um
36:00 - 36:30 we had the privilege to Pioneer together with SDC 25 years ago the market systems development Approach at that time it was called m4p um and I think that is an approach that really looks to establish identify the reasons why companies or or people do not get opportunities and then work on these areas and this is these are often areas that are public private spaces so you cannot just look at the private sector only you also need to understand the framework and establish
36:30 - 37:00 conditions at the macro level and at the local level uh to find Solutions I think this is these are the main and by the way this implies that we are facilitat so we never we s contact never offer services directly to the Target group we always strengthen actors on the ground so they de de develop the services so it is um um sustainable I was going to give a couple of examples was given one that I didn't know so well but maybe I can give you another example which is interesting I
37:00 - 37:30 was uh um it's called it's a project called propella that we Implement together with the Hilty foundation and giber it so it's completely privately funded uh it's a skills development project that aims at introducing dual apprenticeship Swiss style dual apprenticeship in East Africa and you would think well that's an impossible task well it is not we have I was in January was in Nairobi uh and I was at the first graduation ceremony of the first first cohort of 880 electricians and plumbers that were de that were
37:30 - 38:00 trained in a Swiss style Swiss style adapted to vocational training program and how did we do that it was really the private sector leadership was absolutely key Hilty especially and also G it we brought in the 40 CEOs of the biggest electricity and plumbing service providers of Kenya to Switzerland so they could witness the return on investment the business case of vocational training of dual vocational training and they were convin once they went were convinced we worked handy down
38:00 - 38:30 with them adapted curricula adapted uh you know the train we we sought for a for a a training provider on the ground we trained the trainers of or even changed trainers because they had the wrong um you know um profiles we installed two workshops for electricians and Plumas that are probably the best in Africa and guess what of the 80 um graduates that we saw 80% were already absorbed by the companies Okay so really working um and that's quite an interesting case thank you very much uh
38:30 - 39:00 let me turn to niket uh niket what would be needed for more um companies to actually invest in inclusive growth and development in Tanzania thank you again chrisan uh for private sector investment to go into any business it has to be motivated by return on investment but also the opportunity lies
39:00 - 39:30 on solving certain problems in a society the biggest problems in our society currently is uh youth population look people looking for jobs there is issues of food security so if the business is created if your business model is about to address these problems uh you achieve two things actually you you make your return on investment but at the same time uh you
39:30 - 40:00 make high impact uh in Tanzania we Tanzania has a right uh legal and Regulatory environment the leing ACT is in place uh that makes us to really flourish and grow the business we are now going Beyond Tanzania we we're in Kenya and also starting in Zambia but what the message that I I'll give to the people uh listen in is that
40:00 - 40:30 uh you can actually achieve high impact business at the same time guarantee a return to your investors so it's a win-win situation for private sector but also for the social Enterprise but we have less Capital directed towards this kind of high impact businesses as we speak today I have have long queue of farmers waiting uh we have limited resources but
40:30 - 41:00 uh despite making big impact uh these Farmers have to wait 2 or 3 months to get access to a tractor for instance so there is a high demand for these kind of services because the mainstream financial institutions cannot really address uh the kind of segment that we are we are in So when you say the main financial institutions uh cannot address this type
41:00 - 41:30 of of of of segment uh what would need to happen and what other what other financial institutions could jump in so we heard this morning uh the role of development Finance institutions mdbs uh that do not tend to operate at at at that level uh what about local development financial institutions if and where they exist yeah uh it is unfortunate that there is
41:30 - 42:00 a there is a gap in in in skill set I would say for the traditional Financial analytics to look in the kind of business model that we're running and there's always uh there is no precedence that it is they have done it elsewhere so it's you most often you find this is the the unique project unique company that they will be making a decision to invest and they usually uh take that with a very
42:00 - 42:30 high risk and consequently most of the funders will because of I will say because of that knowledge or skill Gap in understanding the business model uh we'll see as a high-risk uh business but in our case we have built a consistently profitable business uh for years now uh delivering high impact so yeah thank you thank you very much and and
42:30 - 43:00 the the the uh notion of profit profitability and at the same time inclusiveness and growth is is an important is an important one um and an important one to retain um I have a we will turn uh to the audience uh very soon with the uh slido uh questions and I still have uh my one question to anyone in the audience who would like to answer it um about you know what is the
43:00 - 43:30 role or do we have a good example um of local private sector in uh and local private sectors uh sector and resilience um in uh humanitarian or emergency contexts so if you if you do have a good example uh please raise your hand and we uh we will come uh we will come to you let me turn uh let me turn to Andreas again um how do you Ensure additionality because you know the the
43:30 - 44:00 easiest thing is of course go somewhere and fund something which or invest in something which is sort of a no a no-brainer which would probably uh exist anyway and and and grow and be profitable uh anyway so how do you ensure additionality I think it's a very important question and uh it also links to what nikom just said um uh obviously uh there are the cases and and uh we look we look uh during a year we look at around 900 2,000 business cases and and
44:00 - 44:30 and and and Ventures and sometimes there are the cases where everything is going well they're growing well they're close to profitability they have the structures in place which are necessary and we look at it from a business perspective as well as from an impact perspective and we have to say look they just need Capital but the risk is manageable and they don't need additional input uh uh on the knowledge side and then we
44:30 - 45:00 don't make a difference anymore and then we don't invest sometimes I have to confess it's also sad because the case is great the entrepreneur is great everything is there but then we link these companies to for example impact uh investors who are not philanthropic who come at the later stage and who think here the risk return should make sense for them for us it's very important that we make a difference regarding the development SP as stage of the company so if we see that the business case
45:00 - 45:30 makes sense but is not yet fully implemented if we see that they know what they're doing but might have certain flaws in certain aspects where we could provide additional assistance to fix this and if we see that an investment for a period from at the beginning we have to be honest we s it will be 5 to seven years the reality is 7 to 10 years that an investment over this period would help to move the company into a stage where it will become interesting for other investors because it it turns to into
45:30 - 46:00 profitability because it creates lasting impact then it's a case for us so for us we are a small organization we have limited capacity and limited capital and our mission is to help to grow as many companies as possible into a stage where they can sustainably create impact for people living in poverty and this means we also have to say no sometimes to companies who are already there and who don't need us anymore how many of those have you grown uh at the the total since
46:00 - 46:30 we started we have invested in 54 companies six of them totally failed so we cannot count them but for the rest um we can say we are now at a impact for 46 million people around the world which are impacted through the companies uh we created not all of them moved completely out of poverty but they made a big step towards uh the right uh uh Direction and
46:30 - 47:00 I think this is what is so powerful if you have a company which and we heard two great examples in this session if you have a company which provides access to people access to uh food access to jobs access to the markets access to other income opportunities access to education access to infrastructure then you really transform the life of people and you don't do this by donating and this is very important we invest in
47:00 - 47:30 equity we also and I have to advertise this a little bit especially in this room because we see the Deb sector growing there more and more impact investors going into the Deb sector also uh public institutions and we lack the same energy and growth still on the equity side we know it's more complicated it's maybe also a different kind of risk but we very often look at young companies which can already they only on the road for 3 years but are over debed on the balance sheet they
47:30 - 48:00 they they start with kind of a startup loan or start startup loan Grant something also this this this this this notion of you only have to repay if you're successful but what does this actually mean but so from the very beginning if you look at the balance sheet there is debt and then the debt grows and then you come to a level where no one will invest in you anymore in the equity part because as an equity investor you don't like your role to be just the one who pays off the people who
48:00 - 48:30 were there before so this is why we go into Equity the other reason is it's the closest form of partnership we then sit in the same boat with our entrepreneurs we know exactly we either are successful together and then it's great for both of us or we're not successful and then we lose both of us there is there is not not a big differentiation the only thing we are very much looking at and this is also important the differentiation must be our entrepreneurs need to stay in the driver's seat so we never take majority
48:30 - 49:00 which also means it gives a completely different uh notion to partnership we cannot force our entrepreneurs to do anything we can give them advice we can work with them but it's their decision at the end because it's their company and we think it's so important we're not coming from outside and trying to shift around what they are actually build up and what they believe in and where they put their whole life energy in we there to support but it's their decision and it's at the end their
49:00 - 49:30 success thank you let's go to the slido questions maybe um I have to put on my glasses so I can actually actually read them so the first one is fighting extreme poverty or fighting poverty is not just about economic growth it is more about the distribution of resources and inequalities how can the Swiss private sector Ensure includ inclusive economic growth who would like to respond to this
49:30 - 50:00 question Philip um I was going to tell the story how we do it but now the question is how the Swiss private Swiss private SE exactly I think there is a currently yesterday was a panel discussion about the Coco sector um you know the Coco is a an important ingredient to um the Swiss chocolate industry um I'm not fully aware but I'm partially aware of what's going on in the sector there's
50:00 - 50:30 new regulation coming in from the EU um and I think it forces the private sector also to take a much closer look at issues like um you know income of the poverty um child labor deforestation and other challenges um and um it's it's an ongoing discussion if this um if this regulation um um will eventually help the farmers or not uh because it could also drive out Farmers especially in Africa so they are
50:30 - 51:00 being replaced by lower risk uh uh you know um um sourcing uh environments like in Latin America and so on but at the same time I see and and there were there was the case of uh Ecom one of the big Traders uh that explained how much they invest into you know training Farmers for example um Ecom is a Swiss company by the way it's based in Switzerland and are I we know plenty of the Swiss chocolate industry companies that invest
51:00 - 51:30 quite heavily I se kalba is a very good example it's the company of cop uh that invest a lot into sustainability and they have all come together in the in the Swiss uh sustainable Coco platform uh which is co-financed by SEO and I think it's a very interesting vehicle not only to manage you know uh knowledge and experiences in the sustainability space but also to uh fund projects um co-fund together PP PS as public private partnership development projects uh that
51:30 - 52:00 can make a difference so um my experience in this space is really a very positive one I think the Coco sector I see many companies engaging and training forers and providing uh access to health and access to education and so on so I think there is a case to be made that the Swiss private sector can support inclusive growth along the value chains the supply chains that they need now there is often yes you we we we link um Farmers
52:00 - 52:30 to Global value chains or local producers to Global value chains but what about the local value chains and the the strengthening of the local um entrepreneurial ecosystem because at the end of the day as we as the title of this session is uh local private sector as a backbone for sustainable development and so how do you get out of this of this conundrum to from trying to to link everything to a global uh value
52:30 - 53:00 chain as opposed to to Really uh producing processing and marketing locally a bit what uh the the DG of uh the World Trade Organization said yesterday yeah but I see the opportunity for for exports I see this as a huge opportunity I mean if you have to wait until the local uh the local um environment is really mature so you can actually say sell all so high level products I know the case of chocolate so for example we worked on a on a Coco
53:00 - 53:30 project in Colombia where we saw an opportunity to export high quality Coco into uh markets that require high level quality of Coco because the Colombian uh chocolate uh companies did not care about high quality just wanted to have to Coco so I see this is an opportunity but of course I mean as uh the uh the the um the local economy grows there may be more opportunities I mean this is how we have developed we did not so much have the possibility to export to higher
53:30 - 54:00 or or more advanced economies uh but we had at least the possibility in switzland is a good case to to export to to at the same level so I think this is also I see it as an opportunity for developing countries to be in these incorporated into this value chat also with the risk I mean dependencies can be created I know that we have seen the problem also that sometimes when you want to integrate into to these value chains especially if they're not specialized value chains but commodity value chains there's a lot of pressure
54:00 - 54:30 on productivity and that may make Farmers for example vulnerable that is clear but it's also an opportunity so it depends a little bit on how you you manage it do any of the other panelists want to add something to that only two short remarks first of all I I really like the question but we have to be careful not to take it as a counterargument and say we have to fix everything first before we come back to economic growth I think if we look at the state of the world economically and
54:30 - 55:00 the fact which was mentioned how many people live in poverty we have to work on economic growth we have to work on the other topics as well and this they are equally important but we should not overload it and sometimes it's kind of an excuse we should not only focus on that and that's why we don't do it no we have to um it's not fair to say to people who live in poverty uh look sorry we cannot care for it because it doesn't fulfill the whole list and the whole
55:00 - 55:30 checklist we would like to see at the end so this is the one thing the other thing is what you said about demand before I think we are entering a phase in in many countries where we see a stronger development of the local market and this is the opportunity because I fully share your view we have to look at more local and more south to sou especially in trade South to sou models and they're coming up what what what we really uh push is that we understand the
55:30 - 56:00 demand um we cannot start is from the supply side and so yes if we have international demand it's great but it's also as you said risky and also more complex um and if we are able to identify local demand and serve to this I think there there are there's a potential for quite interesting business models of future thank you I I see you I see you not sopia um absolutely local local demand is there something you want to
56:00 - 56:30 add um the look I'm so sorry can you ask me the question again um the the the question was on on on local demand and the importance of local demand and the the pull actually from uh local uh markets as opposed to Global value chains uh so what happens is let's say for example in Nepal so we've realized that we are burdened
56:30 - 57:00 with imported Commodities so what happens in case of Nepal uh no matter how quality uh produce or sorry how quality uh quality of a fresh produced you produce there is a very good chance that the imported Commodities always are better competitive and in terms of price in terms of of quality in terms of uh negotiation and at the same time what
57:00 - 57:30 happens in Nepal is we really don't have a supply chain where we can fulfill the demand 12 months a year mhm because we don't have a systematic Market systems or uh Technologies in place which can actually help our Farmers to produce 12 months so no matter how much we go for example in even our company we go and negotiate with the Traders and there is
57:30 - 58:00 a demand of our local Commodities but because there is no continuous supply chain there is no value added in the supply chain and because there is a huge loss which I mentioned earlier which is 40% which gets added to the cost for the traders to the consumers again uh there is a very very uh challenging situation for our farmers no matter whatever amount of in amount of produce they do and given
58:00 - 58:30 the fact that uh even the donor organizations or uh the government organizations are so much focused only in producing we have never focused what the market actually demands so this is where organizations like SS contact really helps us because they were the only ones who actually we're willing to support private organizations so with our with when this supported us they were supporting another 3 4,000 farmers
58:30 - 59:00 and at the same time we were able to bring those Commodities from the rural places to the market even during the off Seasons or lean Seasons let's put it that way okay thank you thank you very much let's go to the next question on slido I guess this one is is for me the basis of I already saw it yesterday on slido so uh we will we will answer it now the basis of innovation is solid education why has SDC de prioritized
59:00 - 59:30 education in its operation um as you as you know we have gone through a relatively uh significant uh budget cutting exercise we have lost uh added on together between Ukraine linear cuts and the Parliamentary Cuts roughly 20% of our bilateral budgets including the Thematic budgets and 25% up to 30% of the uh multilateral uh
59:30 - 60:00 budget um humanitarian activities were uh were exempt and of course this has uh consequences which meant that we had to re focus a certain number of our activities and in the era of Education uh we decided to focus on where Switzerland had uh the biggest added value and uh the biggest uh knowhow um which doesn't mean we're moving out of Education we're moving out of basic education where there are other many
60:00 - 60:30 other donors and organizations active and uh we concentrate on uh vocational training uh which is a a model uh Switzerland is is which is inde in the DNA of Switzerland where we have a a lot of expertise and on education in emergencies um also with uh education in emergencies uh H in Geneva so that is the answer to that uh question was already posted uh yesterday I uh believe
60:30 - 61:00 um I would now take like to take the the next question there which is on the downturn of uh foreign aid globally um and the question is will the the current downturn of forign a globally result in increased investment in developing the private sector instead of classical humanitarian and development Aid you remember I asked you a question uh earlier I asked a question
61:00 - 61:30 to the to the to the to the audience here in the room is what is the role of private sector in a humanitarian setting a role of local private sector in a humanitarian uh setting does anybody have an example yes we have a a lady there and then here thank you my name is betric beta um I
61:30 - 62:00 work for an NGO in Geneva on global Health um and I think a really good example in humanitarian settings and how the private sector can support is in provision of continued medical services so we often see that a lot of equipment comes in in humanitarian settings particularly in protected conflicts um from various donors but also locally um and that equipment then breaks down and there's a dire lack of skilled technical engineers to maintain and service this equipment and repair which means it is
62:00 - 62:30 left unused and not available for treatment and providing those services so here the local private sector through upskilling and supporting them in being able to address a variety of mechanical issues and uh service and repair can really support continued medical service provision um in those critical settings thank you very much we have a another example right next to you thank you so much much yes I would like to double that hello everyone I am working for
62:30 - 63:00 Planet International Switzerland and together with our colleagues at plan Lebanon we managed to in the recent crisis to keep up a lot of business operations because um okay we're we were in the privileged positions to already have existing relations so we kept our rapid market assessment relatively short because we already had access to a lot of information on the markets there and we knew that especially the food assistance um
63:00 - 63:30 shelter uh a lot of typical humanitarian assistance we were able to Source locally so instead of relying on external agencies um doing a massive logistic operation we sourced everything locally and by doing that we supported a lot of existing markets there thank you thank you very much um question to the the same question to the
63:30 - 64:00 panelists um we've heard what uh private sector local private sector can achieve also in fragile context and humanitarian settings and the question from slido is with the economic uh downturn and the the crunch on the typical Grand money in official development assistance will that lead to increased investment in the private sector rather than in traditional humanitarian and development
64:00 - 64:30 uh Grant giving I I wouldn't know why uh I'm I'm really struggling to understand this I mean the private sector we heard yesterday also again um from the WTO that Switzerland only invests 1% of its foreign direct investment goes actually to Africa I mean there are good reasons for that and we should talk about the reasons it's not just like wow now there is an overlap between development Aid and private sector we're trying to catalyze and build the
64:30 - 65:00 fundament so that private sector money can come in I I like what Andrea said I feel sometimes we feel we try to develop the pipeline of investable opportunities and then we need uh investors that take risk that impact First Investors like AO uh there are not too many of them unfortunately as you said and then the the real investment kind of the profit seeking investment is is pouring in and I think this is the approach that we have I don't think that people will
65:00 - 65:30 simply jump into taking higher risks uh if there is nobody there I think the opposite will happen if there is nobody catalyzing and and growing this opportunity pipeline opportunities these investable opportunities that uh uh Development Corporation currently does then there will be less investment coming from outside I I feel that is a clear risk yes c i calization I think there there is a clear risk that catalyzation will suffer and therefore
65:30 - 66:00 it will be even more risky so I think I fully agree with with this argument to try to find positive or optimistic where are the opportunities uh to ask that way I would say we have a certain areas where we have had a crowding out where International Development agencies came in with private sector support at uh uh let's say if it was about investing given for example debt facilities at
66:00 - 66:30 prices and under conditions which shy way the private investors um because because uh this was not competi it was not possible for privates to compete against this anymore also there that the risk return ratio but also the the focus of the investment so I would say we will lose a little bit of this crowding out and this might be also an opportunity for investors who want to come in to do this under reasonable uh uh conditions with with a market which which is a
66:30 - 67:00 little less deterred so this would be one argument the other Hope from my side would be that we in generally reink a little bit and it's sad that it's the smaller smaller budgets which force us into that but at the end we have to really reink how governmental money how International Development Aid money is spent best and we deeply believe that we should focus more on private sector activities on entrepreneurial activities
67:00 - 67:30 on activities who should be able to finance themselves through what they are doing which means they should make profits or at least be kind of cash flow positive over time and that we find ways how governments how uh multilateral players go deeper in into this because uh what we see from our experience we are now 18 years in the sector we're now 18 years first of all the the entrepreneurial energy has developed in
67:30 - 68:00 a very impressive way and again we saw two great examples in this panel and there are more out there so the trend goes into the right direction and and again and this links us back to the topic of the panel at the end wealth in all economies was created through private sector activities and and not through projects from all over the world and and look at at how Europe developed look how the US did it how the Asian tiger States made the big jump out of
68:00 - 68:30 poverty it it was through entrepreneurship and I Think It's Tricky it's not obvious sometimes but I think we have to work on how do we use the budgets we still have to take this into account absolutely thank you very much uh let's go to the next question which I think is will be for uh the two entrepreneurs on online how do we better facilitate impact investment funding for micro and small Enterprises in
68:30 - 69:00 collaboration uh as collaboration with them is often perceived as not efficient and it is too much work compared to how much investment they can absorb I think nikomed you uh told us pretty much the opposite so I'll go first to you and and and tend to Sophia yeah I'll check that Christian so this is basically what we do every day uh if you Leverage The Local knowledge and Partnerships and
69:00 - 69:30 Technology it's really not too much work uh I can give you an example uh last year we imported like 200 tractors directly from the original equipment manufacturer and delivered to the farmers uh across Tanzania on a on a 2E threee four year lease and these are all fitted with the GPS enable tracking devices so we really we actually know where they are uh all
69:30 - 70:00 the time so it is not really uh too much work if you leverage on the technologies that are available and and every Farm has a mobile phone so we can communicate at any time and actually track uh the equipment track their performance so we were able to to deploy like $5 million in a very short time across many many farmers creating uh impact uh improving food security but
70:00 - 70:30 also also uh attaining return on our investment so you need to choose the right Partners to actually reach and if you try to reach yourself to the Grassroots uh and you don't have really much local knowledge uh it may be problematic as as as the question was asked thank you sopia do you have many points you want to add about it's too much work and too difficult to invest in
70:30 - 71:00 msmes locally it is it is actually too much work to be very honest it is too much tedious but at the same time we've got to do this because if we don't work there is no better future right I mean let's say in case of Nepal we are every single day 100 thousand of
71:00 - 71:30 youths are getting out of the country and when we go to The Villages or rural development rural areas there are there are no people who can work you know there either children or there are old people and I know this is too much work but at the same time the impact investment or whatever even time or resources that invest that are invested if we don't do it now there is
71:30 - 72:00 not going to be tomorrow because in our in our case um if I have to say I go and Pitch every single day to the government to the donors to the investors for so that they can see that let's say for example if we work here or let's say because we are here I want you to trust that we can make the difference that's required to better future absolutely and actually build
72:00 - 72:30 this buil this credibility uh locally absolutely thank you uh very brief point from you yeah maybe one thing to add because I also understood the question a little bit how it looks from the investors perspective if you only have small investment tickets but a lot of work to do technical assistance value creation to support it and here would say again for me this is an example why we need philanthropic impact investors one of the biggest reasons why our
72:30 - 73:00 entrepreneural challenge is to protect our Capital so we say we are successful if we get our Capital back over the portfolio over the time is that making profits would mean we would not be able to also invest small tickets in companies where we have to also invest a lot of work but we need to do it because you should not only look at the short term but if you are able to create a stable company or to support a stable company on its way which is profitable
73:00 - 73:30 the company will exist for decades afterwards so the impact you create then very well pays back actually the time and the the energy you you had to you had to invest before that so I would say I see the question and this is the challenge for uh for profit impact investors they have to look they a ticket size at a certain level but this is why I think we need more philanthropic investors to come in while companies are still small and need a lot of and you can also aggregate I mean
73:30 - 74:00 this is there are there are many mechanis more of them exactly there there are many many mechanisms such as know a jelly that is typically doing uh doing that uh and and finances uh EA and and and others so we have three more minutes left and uh I'll give the word to each of the panelists Imagine in you know we have an international cooperation Forum maybe not here in
74:00 - 74:30 Switzerland but in Tanzania or or in Kenya or in in in in in in Nepal and you look back at this at this panel 10 years later and what would you what you be what would you like to be able to say in one sent so 10 years forward you look back and
74:30 - 75:00 say wow or well no not great but what would you what would what you what would you be like to say in 10 years time uh about uh local private sector and driving sustainable development you have one sentence who would like to start so I would really love to say it was fantastic 10 years to see the private sector growing in developing
75:00 - 75:30 economies because the governmental money the money of multilateral players went more and more into direct Investments thank you Philip I'm currently more pessimistic I must say I would say um I would say in 10 years I would like to be able to say that at least we have been able to support many people uh even though the context will probably continue to be
75:30 - 76:00 complicated sopia well I would like to say that in 10 years first thing is I would want to see my company still going on it's very important because I know like you mention it's too much of work for all the investors for the government for the
76:00 - 76:30 donors but I'm very positive that we will all work together for the same purpose thank you very much ni uh in 10 years I think uh our business model will have been known by all the potential investors and and will not have the current situation where we can save the farmers in need thank you very very much big thank you very
76:30 - 77:00 much so this concludes this session number number six huge thanks uh to the panelists niket Sophia Andreas and uh Phillip thanks to all of you here in the room and to all of you online