The 10th BRICS summit was recently hosted in South Africa, with the theme BRICS in Africa: Collaboration for inclusive growth and shared prosperity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As far as summit titles go, this is no doubt impressive, with all the buzzy and fuzzy words that capture the hopes of our increasingly polarised milieu – ‘collaboration’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘sharing’ – as well as the inchoate and threatening future, looming in the moniker ‘revolution’ (revolutions produce anxiety even if they are only industrial!).
Nonetheless, we should push our weariness and cynicism at PR and corporate speak aside because, to paraphrase a certain saying, if you think the cost of mission-, vision- and values-statements is expensive, consider the cost of the next governance failure. Collaboration is at the heart of interdisciplinarity, a crucial element to overcome ‘silo thinking’ and thus the key to unlocking innovation. Including all stakeholders in one’s business enterprise gives every stakeholder, well, a stake in the success of one’s enterprise. Sharing unleashes a commitment from stakeholders to actively engage in the success of a business, creating a virtuous cycle of value creation. Only this will allow us to harness the disruption that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will unleash on all of us, in Africa and beyond , and ensure we can sustain a vibrant and happy planet for all who live here.
Summits and fancy summit titles alone will not achieve this hope, but a conversation is always the starting point to a clear articulation and defining of the problems and solutions. This is at the heart of what we, at BEN-Africa, strive to do. Our recently updated 2020 Strategy announces our mission as such:
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