E-commerce is a powerful means to connect the unconnected to global trade.
Arancha Gonzalez
In their pursuit of growth and diversification, African economies should consider transforming the discourse from a focus on industrialisation to a broader one centred on value addition in agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
While tourism is often resource-intensive, it is a major driver of poverty reduction in developing countries.
The tourism industry has considerable potential to be a sustainability role model in its role as a buyer of goods and other services, from building materials and green construction standards to farm produce.
Entrepreneurship is one of the most important drivers for job creation. Moreover, social entrepreneurship offers not only a path for young people to transform their own lives, but also a way to empower others.
It has been proven through studies by the World Bank and others that companies participating in international trade are more competitive.
Laws matter. With effective implementation and enforcement, good laws can nudge forward positive changes in social and cultural mores.
There is no intrinsic reason African countries should be importing, rather than exporting, basic staples like rice or higher value products like frozen chicken, cooking oil, or instant noodles.
Responsive governments committed to improving the broader trade facilitation and business environment can help companies of all sizes by improving infrastructure: roads, transportation, ports, information and communication technology, and electricity.
When the International Trade Centre, the agency I head, works with German electronics giant Bosch to help Kenyan food processing companies boost their productivity and export competitiveness, we may well be creating future customers for Bosch washing machines.
The representatives of young professionals and woman entrepreneurs deserve seats at the big table to evolve viable, efficient, and sustainable solutions for problems the world is faced with. Without their participation, there will always be a deficit of compassion and innovation.
Economic desperation often drives wildlife destruction like poaching or illegal logging. But trade can help create powerful financial incentives for communities to preserve the biodiversity around them.
We survey companies and ask them what the barriers to export and import are. Once we map these barriers, we sit down with the companies on one side and the government and regulatory agencies on the other and help them identify obstacles to trade and what has to be done to tackle them.
You must stand up for multilateralism. You must make trade great again.
The lack of livelihood opportunities in refugee camps pushes many people to embark on dangerous journeys in the quest for a better life.
Companies that operate across borders have the expertise SMEs need. Who better to help smallholder farmers navigate complex sustainability standards than the companies who demand - or set - them?
It is no coincidence that in the wake of the Arab Spring, investment in youth-related initiatives, especially related to employment, has increased sharply.
Jobs are the main channel through which people share in - or are left out of - economic growth.
Entrepreneurs - both women and men - need equal and fair access to finance - to create new businesses, to reach to new markets, and to adapt to climate change.
Most people - including business leaders - want a healthy future for their children.
Economic policy that adheres to the tenets of orthodoxy while failing to deliver for large sections of society is doomed to fail.
For Latin American countries seeking to play a bigger role in global trade, effectively implementing trade-facilitating reforms could be an important tool in their toolkits.
Connecting small and medium-sized businesses to international markets can create work for host country nationals alongside refugees, building economic growth and resilience in host communities.
Women are the half of the engine of our societies; they are half of the engines of our economies.
Fully implementing the WTO trade facilitation agreement is one ingredient to reduce border delays and costs for traded merchandise.
I think that when voters react negatively to trade and investment, they are really expressing their angst about the pace of technological change.
Latin Americans are all too familiar with the boom and bust cycles associated with economic populism.
Policy and business elites did not speak frankly about the unequal distribution of benefits from trade and failed to adequately accompany market-opening with good domestic policies to equip displaced workers to upskill, adjust, and share in the new opportunities being created.
Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics, and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative and, frequently, some combination of the two.
Through e-commerce, women have found a means to jump over cultural and traditional lack of available time for remunerated activities.
Growth without diversification, technological improvement, and increased productivity is easily reversed: all it takes is a dip in commodity prices.
Through the SITA initiative, we are building bridges between India and East Africa by taking Indian companies to these countries to see with their own eyes what the opportunities are.
Our main aim globally is to connect more women to the economy because we know there is a specific market failure there: women are having more difficulty in business than men.
The unfolding migratory crisis has become one of the most acute challenges facing the international community. Millions of lives are at stake. All of us have a responsibility to act. Collectively, we need to find solutions.
Skills development as a means to income generation is the key to integrate vulnerable migrants into the mainstream of society and to equip them for an eventual return home.
Governments around the world are looking for economic growth and job creation. African economies are no exception, with increasing recognition that growth has to be built on a more diversified economic structure in order to make a lasting contribution to development.
Many African smallholder farmers did not share in the 'green revolution' productivity gains driven by modern seeds and techniques, irrigation, and greater fertilizer use in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s.
In the ten years leading up to 2013, quinoa prices nearly tripled on the back of skyrocketing international demand for the latest 'superfood'. The grain had traditionally been cultivated in the high Andean plateau, principally for household consumption. But as prices rose, farmers' incentive to sell it as a cash crop grew.
International consumers can rest assured that their quinoa purchases have benefited some of Latin America's poorest people, together with their families.
Large companies everywhere tend to be more productive than small ones. But the gap in productivity is far wider in developing countries.
Improving SME productivity translates into more and better paying jobs, distributed across less fortunate sections of the economy.
In landlocked developing countries, geographical barriers to markets are unnecessarily accompanied by virtual ones: their e-connectivity rates are among the world's lowest.
Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.
Creating large numbers of decent jobs for young people is critical for achieving overall development objectives, from poverty reduction to better health and education.
Full social and political engagement is impossible without economic empowerment, a point that is as true for women as it is for young people of either gender.
Without action to de-carbonize our economies, unchecked climate change threatens to batter lives and economies around the world, hitting the poorest people hardest.
In my experience, what is often missing between intent and action is the knowledge and the means to actually change the way we do business or make consumer decisions.
Consumers need more insight into the goods and services they purchase. Businesses need to produce those goods and services more sustainably.
ITC works to help firms in poor countries become more competitive and overcome the barriers that are keeping their goods and services out of international markets.
Around the world, it is much more difficult for women than for men to run a successful business. Even when laws are not explicitly biased against them, companies owned and operated by women often face discrimination every step of the way, from obtaining finance to finding customers.
