 Greetings colleagues and welcome to the panel on the developing nation as a social entrepreneurial state. The background to this is we have massive challenges, particularly in the global south. And these challenges, while being met to varying degrees of success, haven't really had the sort of impact those of us in the social economy and social entrepreneurial space might have expected. So a few months ago, I thought the Socap would be the perfect space to posit the notion that we need to crank this up a little bit. We need to leverage and scale the rate the rate the way in which we so in the social economy and social enterprises play and take it to the level of the state in order to have the sorts of impact. And I've been very lucky because a couple of my big heroes have decided to join us this evening. Jed Emerson whom you all will know is a Socap veteran and Jed has kindly decided to lend his wisdom. Doreen Shahaz who I met via Jed and I've become a big fan of IIX has a very interesting and persuasive perspective on many of these things. And one of my long term mentors, Luciano Balbo out of Italy, a former chairman of the venture capital association there and a prolific participant in many of these enterprises is also joining us. And another colleague, Tuna Wilhelm from Namibia is due to join us. So we are representing five continents. I'm actually from South America. And I'd like to invite us to first to start the session by really just sharing a few thoughts on this issue around how well firstly should we and why we should be scaling social enterprises and social entrepreneurship to the level of the state. So here goes. Colleagues, I've been in the social entrepreneurial space for perhaps nearly two thousand two decades. And they've been fascinating, fascinating changes, not just in the world in which we operate, but also in the social entrepreneurship space. Entities like Socap have led the way in terms of normalizing social entrepreneurship, but it really has not shifted the needle in the way in which we expected. So entrepreneurship became a thing, a word, a space really from around the mid the late fifties, early sixties, and it's been present and it's grown significantly. And that growth is taking place as the state itself, particularly in the global south, her shrunk. And it is shrunk partly because of various perspectives about the role of the state. And it's been and it's funding where which has come on that attack really because tax the tax basis have been tripled by various macroeconomic reforms. So a combination of structural and practical issues have limited the state's ability to get involved in creation of social capital. And this is meant that into that space has come amazing social entrepreneurs, many of you in the audience are playing and doing great things to create social capital. But yet we are not shifting the needle. And part of it is very simple and actually very clear because we operate very proactively in general. We don't have relationships across jurisdictions, which allow us as any multinational would to scale the impact that we that we have and all the people like Doreen are doing an amazing job at linking people and linking institutions. The key institution across the globe to create change is the state. So why is it that the state which has the same mandate as we in the social entrepreneurial space have. And that mandate is pretty simple. The mandate is to create social capital in a sustainable way, be it a financially sustainable, environmentally sustainable, and in a way which respects the governance and the humanity of our peoples. So why is it that we continue to occupy a space of small individual efforts when we should be do a couple of things I suggest to you. The first thing is, is that we should be advocating for our states particularly developing nations to behave like social enterprises to aggregate resources and deploy the best brains that we can find to create massive social capital is it education health etc. The second thing we should be doing is creating a framework which allows social enterprises as is exists for for commercial businesses to grow aggressively be it through fiscal reforms or simply encouraging and encouraging them through other policy measures to grow and become larger so they have much greater impact. And the third issue I'd like to flag is the issue and forgive me if I if I offend some in the audience, but there's an obsession with innovation versus scaling. And I don't know that the two concepts aren't necessarily in in in competition, but they're here in South Africa and indeed across the global south we're encouraged to have lots of hubs and innovation centers etc. But we don't encourage the same attitude and the same approach to scaling what we do. And indeed, we've come to the stage where the perfect I having the the fanciest bit of technology, the most amazing corporate structure is really becoming the enemy of the good and the good for us must be to have as many people brought to the table as possible. And that's where impact lies impact lies on making available those amazing innovations, but they have to be scaled. So colleagues I wanted to take a pause there and ask some of some of the other members of the panel to jump in. But I'd like to close by saying, we need to scale, we need to leverage and we need to ensure our states are structured as and behave as social enterprises, if we're to tackle the enormous problems we have across our communities. Thanks a lot. So, who's going to take up the flag the channel, please, and just say a little word about about your background, etc. Thank you very much for the invitation. I am Italian entrepreneur after a long life in private sort of impact fund and so we finance social enterprise in Italy and some other investment in Europe, we have my experience is related to Italy and Europe. We have a company that is financing microfinance in South Southeast Asia so I have some experience because I visited India mainly to understand a little bit about the framework of social enterprises in the developing countries that obviously is substantially different than in Europe, more than in other places of the world, this state is in a certain way a social enterprise in Europe, more or less 25% of the GDP is created by the state through social services, education. Any other healthcare system, so basically this state is the major provider of social services in the city. Probably this part in this way we the percentage is much higher surely than the United States but only more than many developing countries. However, even in Europe, the state is in trouble to be an entrepreneur is in trouble to be not bureaucratic to innovate the services, because it's a system it's a global system where any innovation is very difficult to be offered and also this this innovation means to make some mistakes and typically cities it does not accept the state takes this type of risk to make mistakes. So recently recently means in the last 2025 years in Europe, Italy is a good example from this point of view, the state started to outsource part of the service for various reasons to be more efficient more effective less bureaucratic but also to give some money based services that could innovate or bring new system to deliver this type of service so some social enterprise are in a sort of R&D of the social services in Italy, for example, because they are tackling some social needs in a different way, using the money of the state. So this is, is not an easy experience because allocation of money is not always easy from this point of view because typically the state, they try to allocate money to be and then the be there is the issue of the price quality difficult to measure. In a certain case, we, the state where was able to give to finance social enterprise that we're able are able to deliver some social services in a better way that means more effective, sometimes saving money. So from this point of view I do not think that the state can be as itself an entrepreneur. The way to promote entrepreneurship is finance private entrepreneurship strictly controlled by the state because obviously the state being the major financial have to control the outcome of this type of innovation. This is my, my, this is the experience that I want to bring to the table. I understand that in the developing countries. The state are less rich or more poor because even our balance sheet now in Europe, we have a lot of debt so we were in a certain way of each we are still rich because we spend debt, not because we spend the tax money. But I think that one way is not only to attract the money of the state but also money of donors. We need to, to, to my suggestion if I can bring one suggestion is to match between state public money and donors money to finance innovation. And not only the extreme need there are situations where you have to face the need of the moment but on investment or long term we need any country needs to find new solution to the problems more effective, more efficient that we need more money not for saving money but using better the same quantity of money. So this is, for example, many of our companies are working in this way, trying to create joint venture with the state proposing new way to tackle the social need that every day we have in our countries. So I hope that this experience can be, can be helpful, at least in thinking and bringing some experience. Thank you. Lajana, thanks a lot. And I'm challenged by your suggestion that the state can't be entrepreneurial and that should be outsourced and it's certainly a matter we would need to take up in a broader discussion. And I think certainly the idea of the state financing innovation is certainly not, it's a good one and it doesn't happen as much in the global south as say in the North where most of the iPhones we use are financed by USDA, the US Army investments, etc. But I'd like to turn now to Doreen. Doreen, you spend a lot of time in the part of the world and in the country, which is seen to a large extent as having done a lot of social entrepreneurial, implemented a lot of social entrepreneurial approaches in its development track. Talk to us about the notion of the state as a social enterprise. Hey, Koto and a big welcome to everyone. It's wonderful to be part of this conversation. So just a little background before I jump into that. So I am Doreen Shenaz, I'm based out of Singapore, I'm a Bangladeshi American, moved here from New York 16 years ago. And it's very interesting because when I was in New York, I actually had a substantial sized social enterprise which was a global marketplace online marketplace for handmade goods, which I grew and sold to National Geographic. Now, interestingly, I think one of the big takeaways for me when I was running that was how difficult it was to be a social entrepreneur and raise capital, especially as a woman and a woman of color. And that's sort of what propelled me when I moved to Singapore to really pursue that in the sense, how do we actually bring in women who represent half of the global population effectively into the equation. So that really has been sort of the, you know, my pursuit and the result of that was creation of IX 11 years ago actually in Bellagio, Italy, when the impact investing term was coined as part of the group which kind of worked at this. And what's very interesting is if you look at it, the social entrepreneurship, the movement really got accelerated when the whole notion of impact investing came into the scene. So it's very interesting goal. You're absolutely right. It has been around for many, many years. I mean, of course, Jed has written, you know, volumes about it, but it really was that when impact investing came into space, people started sitting up and saying, Hey, you know what, perhaps it's not just about nonprofits and the civil society, but you do need to have the private sector, public sector and civil society coming together. And that's where, you know, very effectively impact investing comes in because you do have a notion of financial return. It's very interesting to sort of run a company like IX, which has been sort of a pioneer in the space and then have to create the entire infrastructure around this over the last 11 years, because we not only saw that we have to work with enterprises, which again, there are hundreds of companies. There are thousands of such enterprises in Asia, and we work across 46 countries. But what was very interesting to see is how little the government was actually doing so going to your question of government being a social enterprise. Perhaps they need to start thinking like that, but so far in the last over a decade that we have been working, at least in Asia and Pacific, it has been very, very slow. I would say the work that we have done it's in spite of the government. And I think we have been very effective in being able to bring in the private sector into the equation where again, in Asia, the private sector is very, very conservative. So one of the things I think to keep in mind, I would say again, whether it's status, an entrepreneur or not, I think the biggest question is the fact that if we are going to actually move the needle, then we cannot exclude women from the financial markets. And women are excluded and even more so now with pandemic and COVID, and there's deeply rooted sort of injustices, and literally women have no voice or value in the system. So I think it is interesting. I think if you are actually trying to solve social issue and if you don't have women as a part of the solution, then it is very difficult. We will be having the same conversations years from now. Now, it's what's very interesting I think for us what we have done because we have focused on this issue of bringing women as a part of the equation. We have been able to bring that into every sense of financial system and financial growth. So it's really looking at women and across their journey, not just say microfinance borrowers but really growing that into almost a dairy business and growing that into coming into financial market. So really working with women along the journey to make sure they are part of the financial system so that they can actually contribute and be able to bring in that you know $28 trillion that we're losing every year in the global economy because they're not a part of it. So just one last thing which is in terms of from IAX what we're doing so we have been able to create the world's first social stock exchange we actually created that for the Mauritian government in partnership with them in Mauritius. We actually created the first gender lens impact assessment methodology through iris working engine and and also we run the world's largest crowdfunding platform for impact investing which has unlocked over $200 million over the last decade. And I think what I'm really, really proud of is the fact that we created the world's first gender lens debt security which is listed on a stock exchange, the women's livelihood bond. And only when we can get all the governments to actually embrace these initiatives and really have the notion of social equality and social justice. I think then we'll know that they're actually acting like entrepreneurs and really thinking of all their citizens and thinking of scale that brings in the 99%. Doreen, thanks a lot and I'm very pleased that you mentioned the opportunity to use female inclusion and women's inclusion as a way of creating leverage and creating scale. Because in a sense it's the easiest and the most accessible form of scaling that we could have globally and your work certainly in terms of creating the first social impact exchange fund in Mauritius. It's something that certainly needs to be needs to be to be replicated and, and I think in terms of the issue of scaling and making the state act entrepreneurially, what's more entrepreneurial than setting up a social stock exchange. And I think those are some of the things that we must think about as, as we move forward to have more impact. I'm very glad to introduce our next speaker who's just joined us. Tuna is a is a is an amazing social entrepreneur based in Namibia and doing very innovative, very innovative, very innovative things, and also has a perspective, which I think in many respects, maybe slightly more closer to the ground and closer to where we need to be getting to and the problems to be solved. Tuna, welcome. We're glad you were able to join us and please speak to us. Yeah, tell us a little bit of yourself first. Okay. Well, my name is Tuna Willem. I was born and brain in Namibia and of late since leaving my corporate job. I have started a company called innovate. The initial idea was that we would look at crafting social and economic coalitions. In principle, the idea is perfect, but I think on the ground, the web is thin and far and wide and the strings and dotted lines and one of the, the biggest challenges was to scope and it still remains to scope out the landscape. And I think it's to be able to also define who is really doing what effectively in terms of their set out mandates within the space of, you know, development and development related issues. And I think in a small country like Namibia and a newly independent country, compared to other African countries, we still have a very long way to go to create synergies between development efforts and in the political sector and the public sector, private sector across the board. And I think, you know, when I was listening to what Dereen was saying, in terms of, you know, the funds that they're raising the social stock exchanges, etc. Those are things that we concepts that we just aspire to we you know you want to use the colloquial so you drew over it, because you can see that it's a reality but the, the structure on this and the systemic challenges that we have and getting are very very real so you know the role of entities like innovators a social enterprise is to really try and number one besides just looking at, you know, commercializing or you know creating value from the social challenges we have is to actually build and develop the market and that's where we really finding where our work is and I think that you know in closing the smartest way for us to do it is not just on our own but to build partnerships with technical and financial partners, specifically technical because we know how the game is played they know what needs to be done so that's where we are and those are the challenges and the opportunities and the spaces we have found ourselves in, but it's a good game. Thanks a lot. And as ever succinct and to the point and underground trying to make make things happen. The last speaker, we generally say that the best for last is obviously Jed. Jed needs no socap introduction but for the uninitiated I'm sure he'll share a few words about his background but Jed, can you pull some of this together, particularly from the sort of philosophical perspective. How do we, and should we even be thinking of the state of the enterprise. Thanks very much for your kind words and obviously I'm really pleased to be in this conversation with so many folks who have really done such great work in the space for all of our benefit. I would align myself with everybody's comments. I feel like in some ways, where you stand depends on where you sit. And we each have come into this practice from different histories and perspectives were operating in different contexts. We have different resources that we can bring to our work. And all of that kind of shades our perspective with regard to how we view the role of the state relative to social enterprise development and the possibility of the state to to be supportive or not. And so in my case, I became my my first part of my career was spent on the ground in youth and community development, and I became very frustrated with the role of the state as a funder. And I said in retrospect that the money in the public sector moves on the basis of politics perception and persuasion and not performance. And it was part of that conclusion that kind of drove me out of the traditional kind of nonprofit and philanthropic space towards something and I ended up landing in a position to be founding director of Red F and working with a portfolio of social enterprises in the Bay Area in San Francisco and spent 11 years exploring a whole host of strategies around how to use support and invest in those enterprises to help them achieve different levels of scale. I think when we talk about scale it's important to recognize that there are some things that scale for breadth and some things that scale for depth, and we need to recognize that it's not a one shoe fits all kind of answer. And I think broadly speaking, the answer to this question of the state as social enterprise really depends on the country context and the history in the US. I'll just speak from kind of, you know, that perspective, although I think we all kind of like have our angles on this, but from the US perspective. And I remember having a conversation with a head of a major international foundation based in the United States and I said we were interested in entrepreneurial approaches to addressing homelessness, and that we were looking at wanting to start businesses as a driver for impact and providing transitional employment. And the response of this gentleman was to say if there's one thing we know about nonprofits is that they cannot run business enterprises. So if you have new money, you should put it into job training and placement programs don't do anything around business startups. And of course, on the one hand I'm hearing that and on the other hand in our community. We were seeing 2030 40 entrepreneurs who because they couldn't get their people employed by for profits or into job training programs were starting business ventures they were starting landscaping screen creating a host of different things. So, and at that time in the states there was no broad support for that type of work, either in the public or the philanthropic space. And so, in contrast I know my colleagues in the UK. It was a whole different conversation where the Home Office sponsored policy and funding to really support enterprises and community interest corporations and a host of other types of things. So, let me just kind of stop there I think that what all of us have expressed is truth with a small T, relative to this question. If you put it all together, you get truth with a big T, which is, I think we all have parts of what is ultimately the answer we seek. Kojo back to you. Thanks a lot. And it's very typical of jet to bring to herd the cats together. So, thank you. You know, but yet let me pick up on a point, the point you make about, you know, people in the NGOs and social space not being able to run businesses. I'm not necessarily sure I buy into that and increasingly we find the, you know, the ring would certainly push back against that as would tune in and people like myself. But I think as Luciano said right from the start, how do we mobilize these resources. How do we bring them to bear in a way which which themselves can create leverage. Even though the state may not in of itself be entrepreneurial, it can create a social entrepreneurial environment. It can create a policy framework, which allows, which allows social entrepreneurs to thrive. And I, and one way is the way, for example, someone like Doreen is doing with with ix and creating social sock exchanges, you know, in Mauritius and hopefully we'll we'll do some of it in mainland Africa, going forward, because those are the sorts of entities which we need to support the communities of the world to do what they do well. But let me just quickly clarify. I'm not saying I affiliate myself with that perspective. I'm saying that my work for a decade was in, in a sense the antithesis, proving that that individual was wrong with that statement. But I do think that the role of the state, as you say, is to create that enabling environment that supportive place of policy, potentially funding. And if nothing else removing barriers to our being more entrepreneurial. And I guess tuna or Doreen I'd be curious about your perspective around. Do you see the state as enabling or blocking progress in this area. I think, Jed, it's very interesting. So we do see, just as you said, it's different behavior in different countries. So I think, you know, for us, one of the things that we are very focused on is now, obviously we have $150 million women's livelihood bond series. So we are now bringing up the third one in the market. And this is a bond that pulls together enterprises from various countries and actually some of them are nonprofits, you know, in that in that pool. And we structure this very innovative structure we put it out in the market for the investors to buy. So the interesting thing is, you know, there's certain countries that's very easy to do that. So for example, Cambodia, we have a number of entities from Cambodia, the government is actually quite helpful in the sense that we don't have foreign exchange issue. The Cambodian economy is pegged to dollar. The similarly saying Indonesia now the government is now waking up to the fact that they do need private sector investments to come in, and they need to support innovative structures like this so they are making the regulations, you know, much more workable. Now, one of the things that I think someone mentioned about the donor countries I do think when we're talking about the government. It just not the countries where the enterprises are located but also the donor countries who do need to now start acting more entrepreneurially and more being more innovative. So we do see some of that, you know, with arms of USAID, you know, with arms of de facto Australian government, you know, with global affairs Canada, where we are seeing that, you know, groups, teams who are actually now looking beyond the usual jurisdiction of, you know, just thinking about development the way it is, because they can actually play a very effective role in leveraging, you know, basically innovative financial instrument which will create scale, you know, which we are doing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And Doreen, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I have to cut you off. This is fascinating and we have the opportunity to continue this discussion tomorrow in the in the plenary session. And I'm really looking forward to teasing out some of these ideas which have been developed. So thanks a lot panel and we reconvene tomorrow. Good. Thanks everyone.