Submitted by Scott Schirmer, Senior Coordinator, Private Sector Alliances Division, Office of Development Partners
Eleven nations today released at the United Nations a joint Bilateral Donor’s Statement in Support of Private Sector Partnerships for Development. Read into the UN record by Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, this ground breaking statement recognizes the tremendous impact that private sector actors have on development and commits the donors to working together to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). More importantly, it recognizes the private sector as equal partners on key development issues.
The donors further agreed to proactively enter into partnerships with local and international companies to achieve the MDGs by 2015. USAID is proud of its association with its fellow donor nations and sees this statement as an opportunity to energize its private sector partnership development activities through USAID’s Global Development Alliance mechanism in a new spirit of donor coordination.
A nascent bilateral working group of the eleven nations on private sector partnerships is already in place. This group will enable the participants to share knowledge, identify opportunities and to begin to develop international cooperation on private sector partnerships.
This working group can be leveraged to create a global community of public and private partners – a global Network of Partnerships. Networked partnerships can be the new reality of an interconnected world. No longer should partnerships be viewed as simple isolated matches: uncoordinated, lacking in strategy, and unrelated to a greater whole. In a globalized and connected world, partnerships should now be networked, complimentary and multi-faceted.
