Business Leaders Discuss How Collaboration Is Key to Innovation and Growth.

GIF’s acting CEO Joseph Ssentongo joined a TIME100 panel of business and non-profit leaders at the forefront of innovation at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos this week. 

Moderated by Dan Macsai, TIME's Executive Editor and Chief Strategy Officer, Joseph spoke alongside Athina Kanioura, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at PepsiCo, and Rob Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at IBM, to discuss the benefits of AI, the tension between sustainability and growth, and the need for collaboration to foster innovation. The panel highlighted how transformative ideas and collaborative partnerships are shaping a more sustainable, inclusive and intelligent future, charting a course for an age of innovation that works for everyone. 

In an era of unprecedented transformation, innovation stands as a powerful driver of progress, opening pathways to address complex global challenges and unlocking new opportunities for growth. We expand here on some of the insights that Joseph contributed to the discussion.

We will not deliver the SDGs without private sector funding and public private partnerships

There is huge potential for progress in emerging economies. We need to be brave enough to invest in underfunded places which offer high rewards. GIF makes innovations investable for private investors, taking on the early risk, which helps catalyse private sector involvement. In 2023, our investments mobilised $10 in capital for every dollar GIF invested.

Entrepreneurs in developing countries face unique challenges. Seed and angel funding is small and limited, grant capital is scarce, and the landscape for early- to mid-growth stage investors is fragmented. Capital to take highly impactful innovations to scale is even scarcer.

GIF’s new returnable investment vehicle, GIF Growth, is an opportunity for private investors to blend their capital with government donors. It provides entrepreneurs with innovative finance solutions, responding to their need for flexible, patient capital. 

GIF believes that the only way we can achieve the scale needed to deliver the SDGs is through public private partnerships. 

Innovations at the nexus of gender equality and climate change represent a great opportunity to drive progress 

Alongside mitigation, it is now essential to invest in ways to adapt to the current and ongoing effects of a changing climate. These investments offer high returns: Every dollar invested in adaptation could result in $2 to $10 in net economic benefits. Making infrastructure more climate resilient, for example, has an upfront cost of approximately 3% but has a benefit-cost ratio of about 4:1. The World Bank has found that investing $1 trillion in the incremental cost of making infrastructure more resilient in developing countries would generate $4.2 trillion in benefits. But resilience and adaptation are relatively neglected in the climate finance landscape, which is why GIF recently had a dedicated funding call for climate resilience innovators, and operates an Innovating for Climate Resilience Fund.

Moreover, GIF understands the importance of strategic partnerships and gender-responsive funding to support women disproportionately impacted by climate change. Despite making up 80% of those affected, women receive only 2% of climate finance.

If women and men were to simply participate equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could rise by 3-6%, boosting the world economy by US $2.5-5 trillion. The European Investment Bank estimates that greater gender diversity in the workforce could lead to a potential increase of 26% of annual global GDP and US $160 trillion of human capital wealth, and could enhance business performance by 15%. Over 10 years of investing, companies with a female founder performed 63% better than those with all-male founding teams.

By placing an explicit value on women’s agency, GIF has successfully pursued transformative investments in empowering women and girls. We consider all our investments through both a climate resilience and gender lens.

Data-led practices, emerging technologies and AI are crucial to progress in fragile places. 

GIF investee Viamo, a social tech enterprise, is making strides in this space by providing innovative connectivity solutions built for simple (non-smart) mobile phones, the most prevalent devices amongst the world’s poorest people. Viamo’s newest solution is a generative AI voice assistant, ‘Ask Viamo Anything’.

Launched in 2023, this technology provides digitally disconnected people with free access to crucial information by generating output based on voice prompts. Its ability to function without internet access and its voice-activated feature make this solution particularly impactful and inclusive, enabling it to be used by even the most disadvantaged – those with low literacy, often women or persons with disabilities.

Viamo’s technology requires access to local language data to ensure that it can provide information on crucial issues in target beneficiaries’ native languages. To this end, Viamo collaborates with international development partners, such as UNICEF, USAID and Mercy Corps to develop content on HIV, tropical diseases, water and sanitation, and more. 

GIF has also made a $3 million equity investment in Agritask, which enhances decision making in agricultural supply chains by offering insights for food and beverage companies. The platform also enables insurers to create policies for farmers who otherwise would not have access to agricultural insurance.

More recently we invested in Boomitra, which provides a soil carbon marketplace powered by AI and remote sensing, creating opportunities for farmers to earn additional income through carbon credits, and encourages regenerative agricultural practices.

GIF is playing a vital role in fostering responsible innovation in international development by derisking these innovations to attract additional investment, facilitating cross-portfolio learnings amongst our community of innovators, and ensuring they are ESG-compliant.

We will only find new, successful innovative approaches by taking smart, calculated risks 

GIF develops its investment pipeline by building strong local networks. But the truth is, we don’t know which investments are going to have the most social impact. It’s only by having the courage to take risks that we learn. What’s why we put data and evidence at the heart of our decision-making process. We experiment. We make bets. We test. We may choose to make a smaller initial investment followed by a larger one based on performance. 

It is through this process that we find new, better solutions to some of the world’s most critical challenges. And we also need to get comfortable with the idea that sometimes we will fail. Sharing what hasn’t worked helps create a more resilient and informed investment ecosystem. It also builds trust among new investors and reduces the likelihood of repeating past mistakes, ultimately strengthening the market.