Lagos State can begin to take a share in the USD$12 trillion global market by creating a level playing field for private sector companies to compete and grow sustainable businesses, Amy Jadesimi, managing director of LADOL Free Zone, has said.
According to her, almost all the 380 million new jobs the world needs by 2030, will be created by the private sector, particularly SMEs – the most profitable of these growing companies will be those that embrace sustainable business plans and targets.
Jadesimi, stated this in a panel season tagged ‘Mainstreaming Sustainability in Governance and Business,’ at the just concluded Ehingbeti Lagos Economic Summit 2021.
She said Lagos State can go a step further to push faster implementation of policies that would speed up growth of companies in the state by working with organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
“To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), we have to enable the private sector to be the driver. In a country like Nigeria and a state like Lagos, it is the private sector, large or small, that is going to be critical. There is a great opportunity for low income, high growth countries like Nigeria to correct our market failures by enabling our private sector to adopt sustainable business models,” she stated.
UNDP recently launched its SDG Impact Standards to support funds in driving capital to where it is needed most. UNDP’s suite of impact standards will help make sustainable businesses bankable, based on a market case and give them greater access to funding.
She pointed out that Nigerian private sector has proven itself to be hard working and resilient, but with a level playing field and wide acceptance of impact standards, as criteria for funding, the private sector can soar.
Jadesimi was a Commissioner on the Business and Sustainable Development Commission that produced the 2017 report, ‘Better Business Better World’. The report identified 60 biggest market opportunities relating to delivering the Global Goals, in four verticals of Food & Agriculture; Cities; Energy & Materials; Health & Well-Being.
The Commission’s work showed how achieving the Global Goals can open up an economic prize of at least US$12 trillion by 2030 for the private sector and potentially 2-3 times more. Well over 50 percent of the prize is located in high growth, low-income countries.
The report noted that achieving the Global Goals in these four economic verticals could create 380 million new jobs by 2030, almost 90 percent of them in developing countries while companies with a sustainable business model will be the most profitable and competitive, those without one will likely fall out of the market.
Jadesimi, who described Lagos as a powerhouse for Africa, said by driving sustainable private entrepreneurship and commerce, creating a level playing field and adopting impact standards such as those produced by the UNDP – Lagos could shortly be transformed into a powerhouse for the world.
