Beyond GDP: How Do We Drive Shared Prosperity at Scale in a Context of Crisis and Constraint?

SDGs
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Community forum 15th july
Community forum 15th july768Ă—432 21.3 KB

On the 15th July 2026, we explored what the Beyond GDP agenda means for businesses in practice, including how companies can create value, build resilience, expand opportunities, and support well-being beyond income through stronger partnerships.

Business Fights Poverty will continue to develop these insights through further consultation with the wider community and the Senior Fellows from the Business Fights Poverty Institute, helping to deepen and test the emerging thinking. The findings will also inform conversations and events leading up to and beyond UN General Assembly week, including the September programme, and contribute to longer-term thinking on the post-2030 agenda and what should come next.

Questions

  • When we talk about “shared prosperity”, what do we really mean beyond economic growth or higher incomes?

  • How can businesses create value in ways that also strengthen people’s resilience, wellbeing and opportunities?

  • What kinds of partnerships are needed between business, government, investors, civil society and communities to make shared prosperity happen at scale?

We thank the following members of our community for sharing their insight via the forum and/or the live Zoom meeting.

Opening:

  • Zahid Torres-Rahman OBE, Co-Founder and CEO, Business Fights Poverty
  • Alice Allan, Co-Director, Business Fights Poverty Institute, and Director, Learning for Impact, Business Fights Poverty

Named Contributors:

  • Aliemu Jalloh, Founder and Executive Director, Youth Help Sierra Leone

  • Claire Bosch Zuazo, Director, Anthesis Group

  • Dr Mohamed Turay, Consultant, Independent

  • Ekanath Khatiwada, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Halima Rabiu, Project Manager, Enterprise Development Centre, Pan-Atlantic University

  • Hamish Taylor, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Helen Mant, Director, HM Associates Ltd

  • Hesham Elzeftawi, Founder & CEO and Member, EBRIIZ and Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Jeremy Gould, Senior Corporate Growth Manager, Charities Aid Foundation

  • Jim Ouko, Director, Praxisolutions

  • John Bee, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Julia Corvalan, Global Operations Manager, Poverty Stoplight

  • Luis Fernando Sanabria, Chief Operating Officer, FundaciĂłn Paraguaya

  • Maggie Rarieya, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Marc Schleifer, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Mario Elias González Lupercio, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Maryann Wanjiku Nderu, ESG Consultant, Enpowered

  • Meshack Kawinzi, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Natasha Kwakwa, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Paresh Patel, Founder & CEO, Senior Advisor, e² = Equitable Energy, Climate Bonds Initiative

  • Peter Hall, Senior Advisor, Ambition Loop

  • Sanjay Banka, Executive Chairman, Banka BioLoo Limited and Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Steph Shankland, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Shirley Mahlase, Founder/Director, Segolo (Pty) Ltd

  • Tasneem Mayet, Senior Manager, Accenture

  • Todd Kirkbride, Managing Director, The Scaling Community of Practice and Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Trina Mallik, Member, Global Expert Network, Business Fights Poverty

  • Vanessa Adams, Founder and CEO, Level4International

  • Willis Ochieng, Executive Director, Creats International, Inc.

  • Yunus Bham, Corporate Partnerships Lead, Plan International UK

  • Yusuf Muhammad, Nutritionist, Yusuf Dantsho Memorial Hospital

How to add your comments

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Greetings, everyone. My name is Ekanath Khatiwada, and I am currently based in the Lao PDR. In this discussion, I represent BFP/GEN members.

For our discussion, I would like to share a powerful case study of the Sustainable Rural Infrastructure and Watershed Management Sector Project (SRIWMSP), funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and jointly implemented by SNV and the World Food Programme (WFP) in Lao PDR, demonstrates the value of a strong multi-stakeholder partnership in addressing the systemic issues of food, nutrition, and diversity challenges

The initiative brings together government agencies—including the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE) and its Department of Irrigation—development partners such as WFP, SNV, UNICEF, World Bank, ADB and FAO, community-based organisations including Village Nutrition Committees (VNCs), District Nutrition Teams (DNTs), and the Lao Women’s Union (LWU), local NGOs such as MHP (Meaying Huamjai Phatthana), and an emerging network of private-sector actors, including agricultural input suppliers.

Within this partnership, each stakeholder contributes distinct expertise, resources, and networks toward a common goal. The government provides leadership, policy direction, and technical oversight. Development partners contribute financing, technical expertise, and capacity strengthening. Community organisations ensure local ownership, participation, and accountability. NGOs facilitate community engagement, behaviour change, and outreach to vulnerable groups. Meanwhile, private-sector partners improve farmers’ access to quality agricultural inputs, technologies, and, increasingly, market opportunities.

These partners are collectively helping to strengthen rural livelihoods, improve nutrition and dietary diversity, build resilience to climate change, and foster more sustainable and inclusive food systems. This collaborative approach demonstrates that meaningful partnerships are essential for creating lasting impact and achieving shared prosperity at scale, beyond GDP.

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Quick intro. I’m Hamish Taylor and I run my own consultancy from a small farm in Dollar, Scotland. From there I’ve worked on value chains in Madagascar, Uganda, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, India and Bulgaria to mention a few.
Most of my work is focused on creating added value throughout the value chain such that wild forage collectors, farmers, first level processors and intermediary companies right through to big brands serving consumers can all succeed in reaching their sustainable goals. This includes identifying and addressing HREDD challenges, as well as finding ways to create sustainable impact in the field through empowering farmers to work towards living incomes while addressing child labour and financial literacy.

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Hello everyone! I’m Halima Rabiu, and I work with the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC), Pan-Atlantic University, where I manage entrepreneurship and SME development programmes that support startups, women-led businesses, and MSMEs across Nigeria.

I’m passionate about building inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems and look forward to sharing practical insights on how entrepreneurship, collaboration, and cross-sector partnerships can drive shared prosperity at scale. I am excited to learn from the diverse experiences of everyone in this forum.

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Hi, I’m Natasha Kwakwa, I’m a member of the Global Expert Network convened by Business Fights Poverty and have background that spans corporate philanthropy, programme design and delivery with a strong Africa focus. I now advise mission-driven organisations on strategic philanthropy, partnerships and collaborations. Looking forward to the discussion today.

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Hello everyone, I’m Marc Schleifer, based in Brooklyn, consulting on nonprofit and international development issues after a 25+ year career with a few organizations in the sector.

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Hi BFP Community! I’m Tasneem Mayet, Senior Manager, Accenture. Based in London. I am always looking at ways to help our financial services clients deploy transition solutions at scale to benefit our people and planet more equitably. Honored to be here.

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Hi, I´m Luis Fernando Sanabria from Fundación Paraguaya/Poverty Stoplight, based in Paraguay. Regarding what “shared prosperity” means beyond growth or higher incomes, I think that money is the “easy part” of the equation!. Paraguay has grown significantly over the last 20 years, and poverty has been reduced by half. In our microfinance program, we have also seen people having enough income, above the national poverty line, but still multidimensionally poor. For us, it isn’t a rising national average —it’s each family identifying and closing its own gaps. That’s why we use the Poverty Stoplight, which measures 50 indicators across 6 dimensions (income & employment, health & environment, housing & infrastructure, education & culture, organization & participation, and interiority & motivation). The key finding: families with similar incomes can have very different levels of well-being. Shared prosperity means people having agency over their own progress — self-esteem, participation, a healthy environment — not just more income.

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QUESTION 1: When we talk about “shared prosperity”, what do we really mean beyond economic growth or higher incomes?

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Hi, I’m Dr Steph Shankland, Business Fights Poverty Global Expert Network - an evaluation advisor to governments, multilaterals and the private sector, with experience in aid effectiveness and evaluation. Thanks to Business Fights Poverty for convening this interactive community forum. Look forward to the conversation and collective insights.

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QUESTION 1:

There are three things here that I’d touch upon.

The first is the long-standing question of how we shape economic and social policies, at the local, regional, national and global levels, to ensure that the benefits of prosperity are more widely shared and that opportunity is broad-based — essentially, a governance question. Ensuring shared prosperity means finding ways to ensure broader and meaningful participation in those decision-making processes, but not at the cost of effectiveness, discounting expertise, slipping into beggar-thy-neighbor approaches, getting bogged down in infinite discussion, or having policies that constantly shift on a whim. I hesitate to use the world populism as it means different things to different people, but there are some of the risks we need to navigate as we expand voice.

The second, and again, nothing new here, but income inequality doesn’t measure everything, specifically the degree to which prosperity is shared; we need to continue the ongoing shift to talking about wealth distribution; the world’s ultrawealthy are dominating economic and political systems not on the basis of their income but on the basis of their accrued capital (many of them hardly spend their own money, they just borrow against their stock holdings).

Third, putting those two together, we need to have a serious conversation about which specific policies we choose to mitigate inequality — taxation of course is top of mind for many, but additionally questions about worker and consumer protections, ensuring the viability of social safety net programs, questions around access to education, capital, housing, water — all of those are going to require rethinking our policy choices.

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Q1 The starting point is here. This body of economic work has moved us on from thinking about growth alone but about shared prosperity. This means equality of opportunity and the basic goods and services people need access to be able to harness opportunities. Based on long standing economic analysis such as J. Sachs, having demonstrated that poverty traps cannot be overcome through income growth alone and that large-scale investments in essential services and infrastructure such as health, education, agriculture, clean water and sanitation—are necessary to enable sustained development.

The economic approach to development has evolved significantly over time….Sen argued that reducing poverty is not simply about increasing incomes but about expanding people’s capabilities and freedoms.Sachs’ economic analysis demonstrated that poverty traps cannot be overcome through income growth alone and that large-scale investments in essential services and infrastructure—such as health, education, agriculture, clean water and sanitation—are necessary to enable sustained development. Easterly and Collier shifted the debate toward new approaches to development finance and greater engagement with markets as mechanisms for promoting sustainable development .

(Refs: Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999); Sachs, J. D. (2005). The end of poverty: Economic possibilities for our time. Penguin Press; Easterly, W (2001) The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001); Collier, P. (2007) The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It, Oxford University Pres s)

Now we look beyond growth to shared prosperity and measuring access to basic goods and servic es.

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Q1- From a nutrition and food diversity perspective, going beyond economic growth or higher incomes means ensuring that all people have access to affordable, safe, diverse, and nutritious diets that support healthy growth, development, and well-being. Economic progress is important, but it must translate into improved diet quality, food diversity, and nutritional outcomes for everyone

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Question 1:

Shared prosperity is about far more than rising GDP or higher incomes. It means creating communities where people have genuine opportunities to thrive, where social bonds are strong, and where the benefits of progress are shared widely rather than concentrated among a few.

CAF’s research highlights that generosity, community participation and social connection are key ingredients of prosperity. The World Giving Report 2026 found that a strong sense of belonging to a community is closely linked to higher levels of giving and civic engagement, suggesting that thriving societies are built not just on economic success, but on trust, participation and mutual support.

Similarly, the Corporate Giving Report 2025 argues that businesses have an important role to play in strengthening communities through long-term, purposeful investment in charities and local causes, helping to build social cohesion and create opportunities for those who might otherwise be left behind.

So, when we talk about shared prosperity, we should think of it as a combination of economic wellbeing, social connection, opportunity, and collective resilience — a society where people not only earn more, but also feel valued, supported, and able to contribute to the success of their communities.

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Q1: a lot has been said already: Shared prosperity is not just output but the things that really matter wellbeing, equity and sustainability. It is about distribution, not just the size of the pie, GDP is silent on whether gains reach the poor or the wealthy (there are other complementary measures like the GINI coefficient). In the context of business this means reducing negative impacts of the business, inclusive employment, a fair offer for companies and workers in the supply chain and strengthening communities around the business. Measurement of this value is also essential..remember measure what matters

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Q1: Amidst climate shocks, pandemics, political insecurity, civil unrest and escalating cyber threats, shared prosperity is not a utopia — it is a necessity. It means building an economy resilient enough to weather compounding issues and agile enough to adapt. It goes beyond income to encompass healthcare, education, digital connectivity, protection, safety and environmental regeneration. Innovative financial tools such as parametric insurance for smallholder farmers show how we can protect the most vulnerable from climate-driven losses. The exponential growth of data infrastructure, the energy demands of artificial intelligence, and the carbon cost of sustaining our digital economy all tell us one thing: we just can’t continue at this pace without sharing the burdens and the benefits more fairly.

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A1: We mean addressing a prevailing condition between commercial partners that has caused one of the parties – through entirely no fault of their own - to transact from a fundamentally disadvantaged position.

In the case of a food and beverage company, a remedial solution can start with addressing farmer incomes upstream through technical assistance, assured premium purchase prices etc, but it might also look at things like intercropping, market gardening or even nutritional education for farmers growing seasonal crops so as to derisk their enterprise from overdependence on a single harvest season and to assure nutrition security, especially in the particularly lean run-up to harvest periods. It might also address problematic conditions such as child labour through the construction of schools or funding of teachers and teaching materials.

And downstream, in addition to providing market sellers in developing econmies with marketing materials to maximise their sales, that business might also work with foundations and local educational outreach partners to address illiteracy and innumeracy among market sellers, which, experience shows, results in healthier businesses for them which sell more of the funder’s products.

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“Shared prosperity starts with shared opportunities.”
“Opportunities to learn, to access finance, technical know-how and increasingly the opportunity to access the “know-who” that can meaningfully connect opportunities for those in the first mile of our value chains with consumers at the very end of the value chain.”

An example is the work I led on Mint in India, the project had been running very well previously and had succeeded in doubling income from mint growing before we even joined the project. However our actions together with our partners, GIZ India, enabled farmers that were part of a FPC (Farm Processing Company) to access finance at 11% interest rates instead of previously 19% and then only in the rare circumstances in which the bank would take on the risk.

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Shared prosperity is about creating value that is shared, not extracted. It means every stakeholder having skin in the game. For businesses, this means designing sustainability initiatives that support business objectives while creating long term value for communities. Companies need to understand how their operations affect people and the environment, then develop solutions that reduce negative impacts while creating opportunities for communities to thrive.

When sustainability is embedded into the business rather than treated as a standalone CSR project, businesses become more resilient, communities benefit over the long term, and economic growth becomes the outcome.

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My name is Meshack a civil society activist. For me, shared prosperity is about expanding people’s capabilities, choices, and resilience—not simply increasing income. Economic growth matters, but unless it translates into better health, quality education, decent work, gender equality, social inclusion, and resilience to shocks, many people remain excluded from its benefits

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