Business Alliance Against Chronic Hunger – BOP and Business for Development

What is the role of business in creating sustainable development?

The Business Alliance Against Chronic Hunger is a truly innovative, interesting, and promising approach exploring how to build on the capacity and dynamics of business to create sustainable development and alleviate hunger and poverty. The initiative was started in 2006 by a group of visionary CEOs and public leaders, who outlined an action plan for business to help reduce hunger. Through BAACH, business leverage their expertise and capabilities to improve value chains – from production processing, and packaging, to retailing and marketing, with the aim to increase food supplies, nutrition, and income in regions with malnutrition and food insecurity.

The pilot project of the BAACH is now taking action on the ground in Kenya, in the Siaya region. Hear Roselyn Omondi, the program manager of the BAACH tell about the project and the experiences so far in this short video-interview:

Why is BAACH an important and interesting initiative?

Milton Friedman long time ago argued that the business of business is business, and their contribution to society would be through creating jobs and paying taxes, and maybe once in a while channel a bit of the surplus for charity. And indeed, in many development sector arenas the expected role of business still seems to be as donors of generous grants as part of a CSR scheme. Donations do have their reason to be, since for sure not all challenges and activities can be solved with a business model. But for really sustainable development, we need sustainability both on social, environmental, and economical parameters.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid in Nairobi – The Way to Vision 2030

On August 17th CK Prahalad was the guest of honour at the conference organized by KPMG training solutions, bringing the ideas of ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ to Kenya.

Long before the actual date, CKP’s picture had been cruising the city of Nairobi via the addposter on the busses, spreading the concept of BOP, which is still not a very wellknown three-letter-abbreviation around here. Although the price for attending this event made it very clear that only TOP were intended, about 300 participants showed up for this event. Of the guests, most were from Kenyan public sector and private companies, plus a few NGOs. I was, representing my current employer Grundfos LIFELINK, one of the only guests from foreign companies.

That, however did not in any way make the event less interesting. On the contrary! One of the key questions of the day was, how the BOP strategy can be applied in Kenya as a tool for development to meet the ambitious Kenyan Vision 2030. CK Prahald’s message was clear: Without an inclusive development strategy that will uplift the 65% of Kenya’s population living below the poverty line in rural areas and urban informal settlements, Kenya will see social conflict and uprising on a large scale like the tragic events of the post-election violence in 2008. You cannot build a prosperous future and a prosperous society without including and developing the resources of the poor majority of the population. Download CK Prahalad’s slides HERE.