The year got to a raging start and we’ve had scant time to update you on our public engagements!
But we’ve been immensely fortunate to interact with a wide range of partners and clients, and address very diverse audiences around the world over the past few months.
To give you the highlights,
In March, we addressed the OXFAM West Africa regional workshop on “Youth Employment in Value Chains in West Africa” in Niamey, Niger; introducing participants to the concept and implementation of value chains, notably at the bottom of the pyramid.
We spoke at the University of Oxford’s Africa Business Forum. Organised under the topic of “Single Market, Global Outcomes”, we spoke at a panel titled “Rebooting the sleeping giant: The fundamental infrastructure, energy and policies needed to support integrated trade across Africa”.
OXCON also contributed to the Commonwealth Africa Summit 2019. Under the theme “Investing in our Common Future”, we contributed to two different panels – “Doing Business in Africa: Managing the Corruption Factor” (alongside Peter Eigen, a personal hero of ours), as well as on “Fostering innovation in Commonwealth Africa to meet the continent’s unique challenges”.
In January for instance, we were graciously invited to attend, and address the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier public policy conference. The panel, on the progress of gender equality on year after the ‘#MeToo’ movement, benefited from a number of perspectives from around the world.
The end of last year was also quite busy from a public engagement perspective. In December we got to enjoy the sun (but not the fog) of Morocco, where we addressed the audience of the Atlantic Dialogues in Marrakech, on “Fighting Corruption: Can Civil Society Lead the Way?”; as well as join a Chatham House expert round-table in Rabat, on “New models for transformation and cooperation for North African Cooperation and Competitiveness”; a few days before that, we joined the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)’s Annual Democracy Forum in Windhoek, Namibia, addressing the audience on “Technology and Inclusion in Democratic Processes”.