Too often governments and businesses don’t talk to each other. This forum aims to fix that, and it’s especially important when isolationism is rearing its head… including here in the US.— Michael Bloomberg
The Bloomberg Global Business Forum (GBF) 2017
September 20, 2017, Michael Rubens “Mike” Bloomberg, the 75-year old CEO of Bloomberg L.P. kicked off his first Global Business Forum with an ‘extraordinary group of business and govt leaders’ (more than 300 of them) in his own words at the Plaza Hotel (strategically) hosted during the UN General Assembly week in New York. According to Axios’s‘Alayna Treene, Mr Bloomberg was quoted to have highlighted the aim of the forum to serve as a platform to get business leaders and government personnel talking. Not many people are qualified to initiate such forums and Bloomberg is certainly one of the few who can. As he has been on both sides of the divide. He is an entrepreneur and three-time Mayor of New York, the most populous city in the US. Bloomberg’s Global Business Forum (#BloombergGBF) includes 70+ publicly traded companies (with a total market cap of $4.4 trillion) whose partnerships with the government can benefit everyone.
Shining the light on Aliko Dangote’s announcement
Of the business heads present at the forum is Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, Nigerian billionaire and owner of Dangote Group, a Nigerian multinational industrial conglomerate.
Photo credit: All photos used in this post come from Mike Bloomberg’s Twitter page: @mikebloomberg
Dangote was joined on stage by Bill Gates (co-founder of Microsoft Corporation), Indra Nooyi (CEO Pepsico) and Masayoshi Son (CEO, SoftBank) to discuss how technology is disrupting poverty, energy, and healthcare.
Mr Dangote cited Nigeria’s 130 million cell phone lines* and his own company’s initiative to use biometric data and mobile banking to target one million Nigerian women for small grants. We hope to bring you updates on this as events unfold.
*: Of course by now many of the people who follow me (or my write-ups) already know my position on phone lines to cell phone user ratio debate. I posit the number of phone lines in Nigeria is not equivalent to the number of UNIQUE cell phone users as many phone owners tend to have multiple SIMs (Subscriber Identity Modules).
According to GSMA Intelligence, Nigeria is projected to have only about 89 million unique mobile subscribers in 2017 which is a 3 million growth from the calculated 86million in 2016 (~ mobile penetration was put at 45.6%) .
Finally, Dangote and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation cited their collaborated effort in fighting polio by vaccinating seven million children using mobile trackers.
Read the full pre-event release here by Bloomberg.
