From beer to bananas: 8 lessons for business and government partnerships

In a recent online chat, experts joined us to discuss how businesses can work together with government to make progress on sustainability. This is what we learned:

1. There are lots of examples of business and government collaborating for development.

Construction companies worked with the government of South Africa to create courses in construction skills in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, for example. Brewing and beverage company SAB Miller has worked with the government of Mozambique on a locally produced cassava-based beer, giving farmers a market for a crop they were previously struggling to sell.

Business, government and non-profit Fairtrade Foundation , have worked together to ensure migrant workers in the Dominican Republic have legal status on banana farms. And UK supermarket Sainsbury’s has worked with the Department for International Development to develop the Congolese coffee value chain and bring the beans to UK shelves.

2. In some cases business needs to partner with government simply to ensure it can operate efficiently.

In developing markets, companies can’t always rely on the supporting infrastructure (such as roads, water, electricity and a healthy workforce) that they might take for granted in developed markets.

Darian Stibbe, executive director of The Partnering Initiative, explains that to ensure success in these environments, companies will often need to invest in improving the ecosystem around them.

3. NGOs can play an important role in making sure partnerships are transparent.

They can also act as brokers between business and government. Nicolas Mounard, CEO of NGO Farm Africa, explains that its role is to co-ordinate the different players in partnerships, understand their different agendas, and constantly put smallholder farmers at the centre of discussions.

4. Communities set to benefit from a public-private partnership (PPP) must be engaged.

In 2014, the Fairtrade Foundation found examples of agricultural PPPs prioritising commercial interests while overlooking farmers’ concerns, according to Shivani Reddy, policy manager at the Fairtrade Foundation.

In the worst case, she says hundreds of farmers claimed to have been forced from their land for a sugarcane project in Malawi.

5. We should remember that the sustainable development goals (SDGs) aren’t business goals.

The challenge for business is translating desired development impacts into opportunities, says Erik Simanis, a consultant on corporate growth and innovation. If the goal is malaria prevention, for example, the business proxy would be increased sales of mosquito repellents to low-income consumers.

6. There’s a toolkit in the making to help businesses understand their impact on global sustainable development.

Andrew Jenkins of development organisation BRAC explains that Global Value is an EU-funded project bringing together CSR leaders to develop a framework that will aid business in better assessing and managing impacts.

7. Partnering isn’t the only way to advance development.

Partnerships consume time, resources and energy, and Simanis warns against collaborating for the sake of it or rushing to hail PPPs as a success before there is proof of success.

Sahba Sobhani, technical advisor at Business Call to Action, agrees that business and government can support each other without formally partnering. For example, government investment in roads in rural areas, which can enable business to expand their value chain, and business collaboration on public health pandemics pandemics such as Ebola.

8. A changing political landscape and staff turnaround are big challenges.

Amanda Gardiner, vice president of sustainability and social innovation at Pearson, says that you can spend years working on a partnership only for a change in government or key partner to prove detrimental. This doesn’t have to be the case she says, but often is.