{"id":72862,"date":"2019-09-06T17:45:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T08:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/?p=72862"},"modified":"2019-09-20T17:48:05","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T08:48:05","slug":"building-a-better-world-through-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/news\/72862","title":{"rendered":"Building a better world through business"},"content":{"rendered":"

On August 27, Waseda University and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)<\/a> organized the public seminar, \u201cBuilding a Better World Through Business \u2013 Challenges in Humanitarian Assistance in Africa and the Role of Private Sector.\u201d This seminar held at the Nihonbashi Campus was joined by Peter Maurer (President, ICRC), Izumi Kobayashi (Former Vice Chair, Japan Association of Corporate Executives<\/a>), Khaled Sherif (Vice President, Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, African Development Bank Group<\/a>), and Aiji Tanaka (President, Waseda University), who exchanged their views on what businesses can do to help address the latest humanitarian needs in Africa.<\/p>\n

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During the panel discussion, Maurer described factors which entice ICRC to form new partnerships with businesses. He said, \u201cWe know that people don\u2019t want unilateral handouts but want different forms of aid. They want capacities to rebuild, jobs to earn more income for their families, education for their children, and security for their communities. The way out [of crises] is in capacitating people in building new markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherif noted, \u201cAfrica is not poor, but it is exploited. To elaborate, Africa exports coffee beans but imports coffee. The value addition, or what we call value chains, is what the African continent is losing on a regular basis. To bring wealth to the African continent, Africa has to be able to take [raw materials and make them into products].\u201d<\/p>\n

Kobayashi explained that, \u201cThough Japanese business leaders are interested in Africa as a market, they are risk-adverse, and are unsure about how their business can contribute to humanitarian assistance or whether the expected size of returns would provide enough incentive for them to venture into frontier markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to their statements, Tanaka said, \u201cAs a higher education institution, we must think about what we can do to help people achieve financial independence. Waseda is on abroad to undertake such a role because, to quote the words of Shigenobu Okuma, the founder of Waseda, \u2018We must not only serve ourselves, our family, or our country, but also be aspired to serve the world.\u2019 These words are written in our mission statement, and as a university with the most number of international students, as well as one of the top numbers of students who study abroad or volunteer, it is our responsibility to offer innovative ideas and imaginations which lead social actors to create new products, market mechanisms, and social systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Khaled Sherif (Vice President, African Development Bank Group); Izumi Kobayashi (former Vice Chair, Japan Association of Corporate Executives); Peter Maurer (President, ICRC); Aiji Tanaka (President, Waseda University); and Shuichi Furuya (Professor, Waseda University)<\/p><\/div>\n

Additionally, Maurer mentioned that education and innovation are essential to unlock potentials, and that having a market-based approach in humanitarian assistance can \u201cbring people back to normal life,\u201d paving a pathway to independence. Tanaka then referred to resilient intellect and flexible sensibility, characteristics he feels are essential in engaging in business worldwide, and expressed his expectations that Waseda students would develop them to think through challenging problems and embrace diversity.<\/p>\n

At the end of the seminar, Tanaka said, \u201cThere are many students who volunteer or those who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs at Waseda. However, there aren\u2019t many students with the mindset to engage in business for humanitarian aid yet. I hope that our institution will graduate such students in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 27, Waseda University and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) organized the public s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,117],"tags":[168,221],"class_list":["post-72862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-topic","tag-education-en","tag-president-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/top\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}