SESSION OVERVIEW

The Covid pandemic has highlighted and magnified deeply rooted inequalities in societies across the world. 

In the US, Black and Hispanic communities have long suffered from a lack of investment in their social services, their infrastructure, and their businesses. The resulting gaps in wealth as well as education and health outcomes have rendered these communities highly vulnerable to economic shocks. The same story is playing out in Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and Middle Eastern communities across Europe. 

Meanwhile, the emerging economies in Africa and Latin America require trillions of dollars in sustainable development investment each year to raise their productivity—and subsequently their standard of living—to levels of high-income countries. 

A direct and highly effective way to close these gaps is to invest in the businesses of talented entrepreneurs of African and Hispanic origin across these continents. By connecting African and Hispanic diasporas through the exchange of capital, commerce, and innovation, we create the opportunity to build global businesses that will generate extraordinary financial and social returns for people of color. 

In this session, we will explore how to achieve this goal, by bringing together a global group of leading SWFs, development investors, and business-building platforms that share this vision. Indeed, could Inclusion become a global asset class?