Creating New Markets: Equitable Wealth Distribution

[Marcus Morrell]

I was at a Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership event last night, chaired by Will Day, Chair of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission. One of the keynotes was given by Jim Cust, an economist and academic based at Oxford University. He founded an NGO called Bottom Billion which helps entrepreneurs in LDCs to connect with businesses in the developed world. He was talking about new models of business in less economically developed countries, with a particular focus on Africa. Interestingly he said that the West shouldn’t see the poor as an untapped consumer base (a la C. K. Prahalad). Rather, they should be empowered as producers as scalable wealth generation can only happen through the development of a service economy and manufacturing base. Examples of entrepreneurship include a call centre in Kenya, a web developer in West Africa and street cleaning service in South Africa, which enables unskilled workers to buy their own refuse lorry over time.