Participation in World Economic Forum Initiatives

Global Health Initiative (GHI) of the World Economic Forum
The GHI was launched in 2002 by Kofi Annan. Its goal is to facilitate and stimulate greater business engagement and action to improve health systems and tackle HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. The GHI works closely with the World Economic Forum's member companies and other stakeholder groups including the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria and the Stop TB and Roll Back Malaria partnerships.

Mark Foster, Group Chief Executive of Management Consulting & Integrated Markets Accenture, chairs the Non-Executive Board of the GHI. Our relationship with the GHI coincides with World AIDS day, December 1 2003, when we became involved in a pro bono project with the Global Fund to Fight HIV/ AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund) and asked for GHI support. The Global Fund was “created to finance a dramatic turn-around in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria”.

\As Accenture's representative on the GHI, Mark Foster offered to mobilize a team from our London and Zurich office. This team led by Products Senior Manager Michael Edwards, went onto develop a mechanism to match needs for medicine and supplies with donations from the private sector. The first phase of the development work was completed in January 2004.

Since then, Accenture has continued to support the GHI through a number of secondments. Some key dates are highlighted below:

2004 - Following the success of Accenture’s pro bono project with The Global Fund, Alexander Meyer auf der Heyde, a Senior H&LS Manager, Frankfurt, undertook a nine-month assignment with the GHI. His role was to develop a concept how multinational companies could trigger that their partners (suppliers, contract manufacturers, distributors) along their supply chains take action against the threats from HIV/AIDS. Besides development of the overall concept and its marketing with select multinationals, Alexander’s work included provision of tools in the form of case studies, guidelines and sample policies to support businesses in establishing and improving education, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

2005 - Accenture's support for the GHI continued with the 3-month secondment of Robert Paquet, a Senior H&LS Manager, Zurich, who planned and initiated an HIV/AIDS Supply Chain Program ‘Beyond Big Business’. Chris Trimble, a strategy H&LS consultant, London, began a 12-month secondment to the GHI in 2005 to manage the innovative HIV/AIDS supply chain program in sub-Saharan Africa to reach small and medium sized enterprises through the supply chains of large companies. This involved tracking five multi-national corporations, each embarking on their own supply chain project. The final output was a modular-based library of guidelines and tools to support large companies extending HIV/AIDS workplace programs along their supply chains. This program was quoted by the GHI as being extremely valuable because it can help businesses fulfill their potential in combating HIV/AIDS both in Africa and globally. "Accenture are the people who can make it happen"—Kate Taylor, former director, Global Health Initiative, World Economic Forum.

August 2006 - Inderjit K. Sidhu, Strategy H&LS Manager, London, began an 18-month secondment to the GHI in 2006. Her role was 3-fold: To implement a strategy for scaling up the supply chain approach successfully piloted by the GHI and previous Accenture secondees, individually map and evaluate all the Business Coalitions around the world tackling AIDS to build on previous work in sub-Saharan Africa and develop a world report in partnership with key stakeholders, and thirdly to represent the GHI at internal (Accenture and The Forum) meetings/conferences, external conferences and publications.

Accenture supported launch of Beyond Big Business ‘Guidelines to support your supply chain against HIV/AIDS‘ at the International AIDS Society Conference in Toronto. Principal authors of the report were: Chris Trimble Accenture and former GHI Director, Francesca Boldrini.

September 2006 - Accenture supported the launch of new China Health Alliance (CHA). Accenture was a Strategic Partner of the China Economic Summit in September 2006 where we were represented by: Mark Boyle, vice president, Greater China: Ken Lacey, global managing director, Health & Life Sciences; Patrick Leung Wai Ming, executive partner; Andrew Sleigh, China lead, Policy and Corporate Affairs; Yu Hongbiao, executive partner; and Bill Higbie, Asia Pacific lead, Health and Life Sciences. "Protecting employees from ravages of HIV/AIDS and TB is the right thing to do for any employer and also makes sound economic sense," said Ken Lacey, global managing partner for Health and Life Sciences, Accenture–one of the founding companies of the China Health Alliance.

November 2006 - Accenture supported the launch of the report ‘The State of Business Coalitions in Sub-Saharan Africa’ which highlighted the potential of coalitions as channels for companies to tackle AIDS. Principal authors: Chris Trimble and former GHI Director, Francesca Boldrini

Davos 2007 - Mark Foster moderated the GHI Private CEO meeting at Davos which was attended by over 70 CEOs and leaders of multilateral institutions. Panelists included Bill and Melinda Gates, Peter Piot (UNAIDS) and Paul Wolfowitz (World Bank).

February 2007 - Mark Foster visited Unilever Tea Kenya project aimed at extending HIV/AIDS programmes to suppliers and distributors during a trip to Africa. Unilever Tea Kenya was one of the five companies documented in the Beyond Big Business supply chain guidelines.

October 2007 - Shannon Roper, Manager H&LS, Vancouver, began a 12 month secondment to the GHI. She is currently implementing a pilot Public Private Partnership (PPP) project in Ghana to improve management and leadership of their national health system. In recent years, research has shown that there is a need to provide support at the health systems level in order for many Sub-Saharan African countries to achieve their health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The project focus is to leverage common management competencies in GHI private sector partners such as Intel, Accenture and Becton Dickinson, as well as non-governmental organizations such as the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), to improve communication and coordination between the 13 Agencies of the Ministry of Health. Learning’s from this pilot project will be shared with global health systems efforts and will serve as a basis for replicating the approach across Africa.

Davos 2008 - Mark Foster launches at Davos ‘Business Coalitions Tackling AIDS: A Worldwide Review, January 2008’ report at a press conference. This report written by Inderjit K. Sidhu, Strategy H&LS Manager, London, covers how four regional and 47 national Business Coalitions are supporting over 1 million companies implement HIV and AIDS workplace programmes. It presents the current landscape on Business Coalitions as it reviews the different organisational, governance, membership, and financial models employed by coalitions, outlines best practices and highlights the key challenges they face as they strive to effectively serve the private sector.

Previous work with the Forum has included:

Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative
Accenture has played a leading role in the World Economic Forum's Global Corporate Citizen Initiative (GCCI) since it was initiated at the 2002 Annual Meeting. At that meeting, Accenture announced the launch of a CEO Statement, which aimed to persuade all chief executive officers to make a "responsible business" approach an integral part of their strategic agendas.

Initiatives Related to the Global Digital Divide
The World Economic Forum's Global Digital Divide Initiative (GDDI) sought to ensure that far more of the world's people, particularly those living in underdeveloped economies, were given increased access to the opportunities being created by new technologies, and to exploit the potential they offer for socio-economic development. Accenture was an active contributor throughout the initiative's three-year mandate, which ended in 2003, and continues to work with the Forum to achieve its objectives in this area.

The Entrepreneurship Steering Committee was established to look for entrepreneurial, self-sustaining and business-led ways to bridge the digital divide. The group helped entrepreneurs on the ground, with pilots in Brazil and South Africa. Accenture additionally carried out pilots to support the use of technology in education in India and gave crucial support to developing national e-strategies in Africa. As a result of this initiative, the Enablis and ITAFE projects were established.

Tangible evidence of the success of our initiatives aimed at bridging the "digital divide" comes in the shape of the Enablis initiative. The initial concept for Enablis came from Accenture's work in the GDDI's Entrepreneurship Steering Committee, which was then fully developed under the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force by a private sector team co-chaired by Accenture, Hewlett-Packard and Telesystem. Enablis gives support through loan financing, business and technical support, and policy advisory services. The initiative received the G8 governments' endorsement—and a commitment of CAN$10 million—at the June 2002 summit in Canada. It has proved very successful in bringing together the public and private sectors.

Enablis South Africa has more than 100 Enablis Member Entrepreneurs and has approved several major loans. Following on this success, Enablis has ambitions to provide its services globally and is evaluating new locations, including other countries in Africa and also China.

ITAFE (IT Access For Everybody) is another digital opportunity initiative where Accenture has collaborated with the Forum. ITAFE recognizes that people in developing regions of the world are missing out on the opportunity to achieve the significant advances in socio-economic growth that technology can enable. The necessary access to technology can be enhanced by taking advantage of the knowledge and expertise of leading private sector technology companies, so improving the lives of entire communities.

Women Leaders Initiative
Accenture is a founding member of the Women Leaders Initiative, which aims to foster greater participation of women leaders in World Economic Forum activities and to encourage their active involvement in the global dialogue. The World Economic Forum through its Women Leaders Programme is committed to supporting the advancement of women leadership and the issues affecting women's lives.