Ambassador Sanders, CEO-FEEEDS, Appointed Concordia's Senior Advisor, Prestigious Leading Global Organization Fostering Collaboration on Global Issues

Below follows Concordia's announcement of its new Senior Advisors, who will help the organization further its mission to "create a global community where challenges are solved collaboratively and inclusively by actively fostering, elevating, and sustaining cross-sector partnerships for social impact." Ambassador Sanders will be participating in Concordia's upcoming annual summit of world political, business, and social impact leaders held during this year's United Nations session. Dr. Sanders will also advise and lend insights for its international and domestic events and meetings throughout 2021-2022.

We’re thrilled to announce the appointment of 60 Advisors and Senior Advisors to the Concordia community for 2021-22.  Selected from a pool of over 125 nominees, this impressive group of individuals, representing a multitude of sectors, industries, and geographies, will play an instrumental role in guiding the direction, development, and growth of Concordia over the next 12 months. From lending their insight into policy developments to sharing their expertise on innovations in their respective industries, Concordia’s Advisors and Senior Advisors are carefully selected by Concordia’s executive leadership, Leadership Council, Board of Directors, and staff, and serve for a one-year term.

A FEEEDS Series Blogspot

Western Union (WU) President & CEO Hikmet Ersek Visits Nigeria along Dr. Sanders as Western Union Advisor & WU Regional VP Diarra

   

   Western Union (WU) President & CEO Hikmet Ersek, Dr. Robin Renee Sanders -WU Advisor on Africa SME Initiatives, WU Regional VP for North&Central Africa Aida Diarra @ Press Conference on WU's focus on Nigeria, Lagos Nigeria

Western Union^® President and CEO says Nigeria is key to Africa expansion

 Lagos, Nigeria, June 18 2013 - The Western Union^® Company (NYSE: WU), a leader in global payments services, today said that Nigeria is at the forefront of the company’s expansion plans in Africa – facilitating reliable cross-border payments with a growing retail agent network and expansion into new channels with mobile payments and account-based money transfers.

With more than half a million locations¹ in 200 countries and territories, Western Union has been present in Africa since 1995 and has more than 27,000 Agent locations spanning 50 countries across the continent. In Nigeria alone, Western Union has more than 4,800 locations represented by a majority of Nigeria’s banks.

On a two-day visit to Nigeria, Western Union’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Hikmet Ersek, said, “Western Union’s vision is to become the world’s premier financial services provider for people around the globe who have unmet financial needs. To achieve this, we are pursuing a multi-product, multi-channel strategy to enable consumers to manage their finances any way and any time they want. Nigeria is at the forefront of leading our commitment in Africa.”

“Speeding financial inclusion, giving more people access to basic financial services, is at the heart of Western Union’s investment and commitment to work with partners in other industries to offer new products and services,” he said. “We are already demonstrating this in Nigeria with remittances into retail, direct-to-bank and through mobile.”

“For our consumers, this means the ability to move money for personal growth, empowerment and personal achievement. For all of these reasons, and more, I am delighted to be here in Nigeria – the world’s fifth largest² remittance receiver – to see Western Union’s multiple channel traction taking shape, in association with multiple collaborators,” he said.

“As a leading global payments services company, we are also committed to continuing to bring best practices in the areas of consumer protection, fraud prevention and anti-money laundering,” he added.

Aida Diarra, Regional Vice President, North Central Africa, Western Union, said, “When Western Union commenced its services in Nigeria, the company moved money from 69 countries into Nigeria; in 2012, we moved money from 196 countries. This is testimony to the fact that an integral part of inclusive financial services is a robust and regulated multiple channel network, globally and locally.”

“The possibilities for the future here in Nigeria are strong. We believe that, as we continue to cooperate with other companies and regulators, we can make good use of our network in Nigeria to introduce new channels and a broader range of services that provide basic financial services and promote financial inclusion among millions of people,” she said.

The company’s first bank agent in Nigeria, First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), inked an additional five-year agreement with the company this month.

Account Based Money Transfer (ABMT), a service that allows the receipt of funds transferred through Western Union directly to bank accounts, is currently available with GTBank and Stanbic IBTC. ABMT will also be launched with Eco-Bank.

More recently, Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) was introduced, offering Nigerian consumers the choice to receive transferred funds into their mobile wallets. It is currently available on Virtual Terminal Network (VTN) with access to 500,000 m-wallets.  It will be further expanded with a launch with eTranzact in the coming months. These products form the base of Western Union’s innovative digital product strategy.

Western Union also plays a key role in financial inclusion in Nigeria, which goes beyond enabling consumers to receive money. The company and the Western Union Foundation have partnered with the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the Bank of Industry (BOI) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support entrepreneurship and help create growth for small- and medium-sized business enterprises in Nigeria and across Africa. Through the unique opportunity, provided by the African Diaspora Marketplace and related programs, Nigerian businesses have been empowered with - development grants, business training and access to pitch to investors and bankers for equity and loan financing.


Note: Dr. Sanders is serving as Western Union's Advisor on its Africa SME Initiative

Agriculture as Part of An Eco-System, and not a Sector & Using PPPP’s

A FEEEDS Series
 
I have previously discussed new and innovative approaches to both agriculture and public-private partnerships (PPP) - arguing actually to expand the matrix of PPP's to include public-to-public sector partnerships or adding a fourth P (The Africa Post - http://bit.ly/4-Ps ). There is a need for more public sector entities to come together to share both resources and expertise to get development accomplished.  Public sector entities that have responsibilities for improving agriculture, housing, water and sewage management, the environment, and spuring manufacturing should move out of their stove piped bureaucracies and develop PPPP vehicles that cut across their sectors. This type of innovative thinking needs to be done particularly in agriculture in order to address food security -- especially in Africa -- since land, water, and environmental management are not separate from agriculture or long term food security. 

In essence the PPPP approach (meaning adding public-to-public sector projects and policies) views agriculture as part of an eco-system, and not a stand-alone sector, which of course it is not.  These public sector-to-public sector approaches can be linked with getting expertise from non-profit and for profit organizations, companies, and international donors with the flexibility to work in a synergistic manner across sectors.  Very few large international donors have this flexibility, but the British development agency DFID probably comes closest. Country donors like the Japanese and south-south nations like Vietnman are closer than others to appreciating the seminal point that agriculture is part of an eco-system.


One such model that is pioneering this new thought is - Songhai Integrative Farms Systems in the Republic of Benin. It presents the answer to changing the age old paradigm of vertical agricultural development. Although this old paradigm served as the model for decades, it did not worked; was ineffective; and in the end, was detrimental to the overall GDP of nearly all African countries pursuing this standard historical approach to agriculture after their independence in the 1960s. Historically, donors equally have been guilty of  not thinking out of the box, or even next to the box on agriculture, although that is changing with more value chain focused agriculture projects like USAID’s Markets Initiative http://1.usa.gov/XhDnHF ).

 Songhai sees the importance of a systems approach to agricultural development adding training and technology as well as an incubator framework to help farming entrepreneurs, and build linkages with academic and research institutions around the world in support.  There are more and more new thinkers coming on board and seeing agricultural as part of a system as opposed to a sector.  But they are far and few in between. Efforts to really have food security spur agricultural self-sufficiency and truly have a workable, sustainable value chain to support commodities, advance regional trade, and combat the cycles of drought and famine that we have seen in both East and West Africa, and the world are not being wholistically addressed or viewed by many development entities as connected issues. 

The Eco-System, rather than the Sectoral approach to agriculture needs to be pursued by a lot more countries, donors, and agriculturally focused non-government organizations and companies with this CRS manadate for their truly to be a paradigm shift and success in agricultural development.