Upcoming UN-backed summit on entrepreneurship can spur development – official

With support from the private sector and several United Nations agencies, more than 800 leaders will gather in the Middle East this April for a conference aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging markets around the globe, organizers announced today at UN Headquarters.

The World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship will draw senior economic and technology officials, business executives and leading entrepreneurs to Oman to help shape the regulatory and business environments that will let entrepreneurs flourish.

And by helping entrepreneurs tap into innovative ways to develop small businesses, officials can help some of the 4 billion people who now make their living outside the formal economy and live on less than $1,500 a year, said Casper Sonesson, an official with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), one of the UN agencies sponsoring the summit.

“We want to engage with these people…to create jobs for them and improve their livelihoods, which will let them improve the livelihoods of other people as well,” said Mr. Sonesson, who is Director of the Division for Business Partnerships at UNDP’s Bureau for Resources and Strategic Partnerships, told the UN News Service.

He added that it is crucial to generate employment for young people, who frequently face high employment rates in developing countries.

And as the UN’s key development arm, UNDP also sees the private sector and the development of entrepreneurs as a crucial avenue for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Mr. Sonesson added.

Known collectively as the MDGs, these time-bound targets were set at a 2000 UN Summit and aim to tackle major global problems such as poverty, illiteracy and hunger. MDG 8 zeros in on developing a global partnership for development and making the benefits of new technologies widely available.

With the theme of “A Better Generation in the Making,” the conference will be held 1 April to 3 April in Muscat, the Omani capital. In addition to UNDP, other UN agencies backing the gathering are the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the UN Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

During today’s press conference, the Omani Ambassador to the UN, Fuad Al-Hinai, said the Summit will give government officials, business leaders and educators a forum to share ideas and forge new partnerships that will help people living in emerging markets from Asia to Africa to the Middle East.

The Summit is being coordinated by the Global Leadership Team, a private organization based in the United States.