MILANO, 8 FEBBRAIO – Letizia Moratti, President of E4Impact Foundation, and Gunther Beger, Managing Director of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), have signed today at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan a joint declaration, in the presence of the Rector Franco Anelli. The collaboration will contribute to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda, with particular reference to SDG 9: “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”.
The partnership will be related to the development of cooperation projects, as well as the promotion of public-private partnerships, to give rise to sustainable and innovative enterprises capable of creating new jobs in Africa. The declaration will strengthen a collaboration that has already been underway for years and is aimed at involving additional partners, including governmental institutions, cooperation entities, universities, private companies, and NGOs.
Concrete examples of public-private partnerships initiatives with Italian stakeholders include the Coffee Training Centre and the Creative Hub Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, the Center for Circular Economy in Coffee and the Oyo Centre of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in the Republic of the Congo, the E4Impact Entrepreneurship Center in Nairobi.
“In 2023, amid global challenges, only 15% of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track for 2030″, said Berger: “We can do better together. Recognizing the important catalytic role that the private sector plays in bringing about transformative change and finding innovative solutions to development challenges, UNIDO strongly supports the establishment of strategic public-private alliances. In this context, the alliance with E4Impact contributes to promoting entrepreneurship and skills development as a powerful tool for boosting job creation, especially in the African continent”.
Moratti, “complementarity of vision”
According to Letizia Moratti, “there is a clear alignment and strong complementarity in the vision of UNIDO and E4Impact in supporting the sustainable growth of African countries. For us it’s fundamental to foster public-private partnerships (PPP) and in this sense our Foundation has three strengths: a strong rooting in Africa, where we operate in 20 countries; the fact of having our “head” in Milan, which is the ideal environment for developing the logic of strategic PPPs; the connection with the Università Cattolica and with the academic world.” Anelli added that “the great obstacle to Africa’s development is the lack of a local entrepreneurial fabric. The originality of E4Impact Foundation consists in training entrepreneurs, with an approach inspired by social responsibility, by forging partnerships with African universities and educational activities carried out thanks to the support and know-how made available by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.”
E4Impact Foundation
Present in 20 African countries with entrepreneurial training programs, business accelerators and multiple projects, the E4Impact Foundation has been fostering and operating win-win partnerships between Italian and African companies for years. Thanks to the connection with more than 11,600 trained African entrepreneurs, an extensive network of institutional relationships and contacts with local business networks, E4Impact is able to guarantee Italian companies a professional and secure approach to new markets. (@OnuItalia)
