Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Master.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Extra. It's our weekly
Speaker 1: podcast featuring a favorite conversation from our week and our
Speaker 1: daily radio show. Well, this week we've got the President
Speaker 1: of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, on disrupting the inequities
Speaker 1: widened by the pandemic. The Foundation pledged a billion dollars
Speaker 1: this week to help address the COVID nineteen pandemic, expanding
Speaker 1: access to testing and vaccines globally, and also providing the
Speaker 1: foundation to encourage billions of dollars worth of investments in
Speaker 1: green energy. It's really all about bringing power electricity to
Speaker 1: the more than eight hundred million people worldwide who do
Speaker 1: not have it. It's all about getting control of COVID
Speaker 1: and ending energy poverty. I talked with him from the
Speaker 1: Toronto Global Forum. But Rockfeller actually has been around for
Speaker 1: a hundred and seven years as an institution that worked
Speaker 1: on the pandemic influences, So the the expertise and ability
Speaker 1: to contribute significantly predates my tenure. But but we in
Speaker 1: in sort of the January February March time friend really
Speaker 1: re oriented about a hundred million dollars of support towards
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen response, and felt from that point on that
Speaker 1: this was going to be longer and more challenging than
Speaker 1: most people had predicted in that moment. And I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing that bear out. I mean, most most global
Speaker 1: pandemics of this scale do have two three four waves.
Speaker 1: I think, in particular, it will take a little bit
Speaker 1: longer than people realize to produce a truly affective vaccine
Speaker 1: and get it distributed. The global track record of law
Speaker 1: distribution of a new vaccine is that it takes longer
Speaker 1: and requires much more effort than most people realize. So
Speaker 1: I'm believing that one is going to be a year
Speaker 1: continued continue to be defined by COVID nineteen, And in
Speaker 1: order for societies to really function effectively, they'll really have
Speaker 1: to understand how to combine traditional public health behaviors like
Speaker 1: wearing a mask and social distancing with a much much,
Speaker 1: much more aggressive rapid testing protocol to enable critical institutions
Speaker 1: around the world, certainly in the United States, to be
Speaker 1: functional through a pandemic threat. I do wonder, too, do
Speaker 1: you look a lot at what's going on in Asia,
Speaker 1: especially in China that they have in many ways. I
Speaker 1: talked to somebody just this week, a big global real
Speaker 1: estate person, but who is very involved in Beijing and Shanghai.
Speaker 1: I mean they're getting back to work, that's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean countries that have gotten the background transmission rate
Speaker 1: down to a very very low rate because of intensive,
Speaker 1: focused lockdown efforts have been able to bounce back. And
Speaker 1: while there are second, third, fourth waves in those places,
Speaker 1: that's through in New Zealand and South Korea and Australia,
Speaker 1: in Germany and in China, they're able to manage through
Speaker 1: its much more carefully. I will say, as we've looked
Speaker 1: around the globe, the one core characteristic of being able
Speaker 1: to be opened through second, third, and fourth waves of
Speaker 1: infections is a very effective, very rapid testing regime in
Speaker 1: place if everyone you know, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: solving a pandemic is actually really easy. You find out
Speaker 1: who's contagious and you take them out of the chain
Speaker 1: of transmission, and that requires a data driven response that
Speaker 1: starts with knowing who is contagious. In COVID nineteen, about
Speaker 1: forty of the spread are people without symptoms. So countries
Speaker 1: that have had broad testing strategies, very rapid fifty minute
Speaker 1: turnaround times on test results, and a real capacity to
Speaker 1: take people who are positive, whether or not they have
Speaker 1: symptoms out of the chain of transmission. Are now open
Speaker 1: for business and will be open for business in countries
Speaker 1: that have not done that will continue to struggle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how kind of clear it is what the
Speaker 1: playbook is, but yet we continue to struggle with it. Listen,
Speaker 1: this is also important right to getting our global economy
Speaker 1: back up and running. The theme of the Forum this
Speaker 1: year is a resilient economy, and there's a lot that
Speaker 1: goes into creating a resilient economy. You know, obviously getting
Speaker 1: this health crisis under control. Um, you need to have
Speaker 1: a job, You need to have the right policies in place,
Speaker 1: the support of policies. I want to get to an
Speaker 1: announcement that the Rockefell and Foundation just made that I
Speaker 1: think really gets into creating a longer term resilient economy
Speaker 1: for so many. Tell us a little bit about this
Speaker 1: one billion dollar commitment that you guys just made, and
Speaker 1: it really is about disrupting me inequities that have been caused,
Speaker 1: um and really widened by the COVID nineteen pandemic. Well,
Speaker 1: you said really effectively that that's exactly what what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do. I mean, I think we look across
Speaker 1: the course of h and right tremendously for the path
Speaker 1: of human opportunity and human inequity going forward. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like we haven't had big crises before, Depression,
Speaker 1: world wars, the global financial crisis of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. What we've learned from all of those
Speaker 1: is the path a society and an economy takes in
Speaker 1: the recovery from that crisis defines the type of nation
Speaker 1: and ultimately the type of global economy we have ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years out if we recover the way we're currently
Speaker 1: poised to recover, which i'd say is slow, is focused
Speaker 1: on those with capital and not on those that depend
Speaker 1: on their labor to earn income, is deepening the inequities
Speaker 1: that have already been illustrated by COVID nineteen. Than ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years from now, we're likely to have a world
Speaker 1: that's more vulnerable to climate change and that is much
Speaker 1: much more unequal, and I can get into that. So
Speaker 1: in the context of that, we we believe we have
Speaker 1: the ability to bring people together and reimagine new solutions
Speaker 1: to human inequity and economic development and green growth. And
Speaker 1: we're committing a billion dollars towards that objective over the
Speaker 1: next few years. What's fascinating about it? And I think
Speaker 1: I bet somebody's hearing that, They're like, what is it?
Speaker 1: Is it committed to healthcare? Is it education? It's about electricity,
Speaker 1: It's about power, right, yeah, and its core it is
Speaker 1: actually about accelerating the COVID nineteen response in an equitable
Speaker 1: manner and then ultimately ending what we call energy poverty.
Speaker 1: The reason the acceleration of the COVID nineteen response in
Speaker 1: an equitable manner matters so much is because community. The
Speaker 1: communities have been hardest hit are lower income minority communities.
Speaker 1: Their twenty three million jobless claims filed last week in
Speaker 1: the United States of America. America's six seven hundred billionaires
Speaker 1: have made about six or seven hundred billion dollars since
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen hit, probably having the best year ever in
Speaker 1: terms of income and wealth growth for the very very top.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's the path we're on because society
Speaker 1: knows how to bail out capital markets and Frankly, we
Speaker 1: don't do such a good job of bailing out working
Speaker 1: families and those who depend on their labor. And we're
Speaker 1: not against strong FED action, in fact for supportive of
Speaker 1: strong economic interventions that support the capital markets. We just
Speaker 1: want to see it being more equitable and we want
Speaker 1: to see more people who have the ability to get
Speaker 1: green jobs, have the ability to build a new infrastructure
Speaker 1: for a modern green economy be a part of the solution.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about the solution. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think you know power electricity. It's something you know, Raje,
Speaker 1: that we all take for granted, certainly developed societies, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we think about I mean, I was
Speaker 1: blown away by one of the numbers that your team
Speaker 1: shared with me about the amount of people UM sustainable
Speaker 1: sources uh that you guys want to bring to one
Speaker 1: eight hundred million people in the world who now live
Speaker 1: without eight hundred million people that's a huge part of
Speaker 1: our global society, UM that are really left out. Tell
Speaker 1: us how you how you think you can do this? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you highlight the number I mean people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been working on global poverty issues and different capacities
Speaker 1: for for two and a half decades, and the reality
Speaker 1: is people always say, well, there's no single silver bullet
Speaker 1: to ending poverty and creating opportunity, and that's absolutely accurate.
Speaker 1: At the same time, we know that the modern economy
Speaker 1: is increasingly digital and hyper connected, and you cannot connect
Speaker 1: to that economy without electricity. So it should be shocking
Speaker 1: to people to know that eight hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: people around the world live without access to a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty kilowatt hours of power a year. That means
Speaker 1: they don't have a light bulb on in their home
Speaker 1: for the course of the year. It should be shocking
Speaker 1: that probably another billion and a half people live in
Speaker 1: economies with the number one constraint to job growth and
Speaker 1: too small business starts is in fact, access to reliable
Speaker 1: power that can support busyness. Is you know, unreliable power
Speaker 1: that goes out every couple of hours. You can't start
Speaker 1: a business, you can't hire people, you can't invest in capital.
Speaker 1: And I've seen these communities. I've rock Fellow has been
Speaker 1: investing in them for more than a decade. We now
Speaker 1: have a set of solutions to this problem that are
Speaker 1: based on green technology, artificial intelligence, smart metering, new ways
Speaker 1: of bringing capital markets to the world's very poorest people.
Speaker 1: And there's no reason why ten years from now we
Speaker 1: could not have eliminated energy poverty and brought one to
Speaker 1: two billion people into the modern global economy in a positive,
Speaker 1: hopeful way. That's what we're trying to do with as
Speaker 1: part of the recovery from COVID nineteen rash. How do
Speaker 1: you do it? Because, um, just this whole idea of
Speaker 1: kind of developing, you know, and bringing electricity to so many,
Speaker 1: so many people a billion dollars, it's a large commitment
Speaker 1: what needs to happen, and I'm assuming you've got to
Speaker 1: bring in other partners to make it happen. Well, you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. It's it's first, it's inspired by the reality
Speaker 1: of science, techn oology, and innovation. We have always been
Speaker 1: an institution that believed if you worked extra hard to
Speaker 1: bring the scientific and technological frontier to the world's most
Speaker 1: vulnerable people, you can shape the nature of human opportunity.
Speaker 1: We did that fifty sixty years ago and creating something
Speaker 1: called a green revolution, where we helped triple quadruple crop
Speaker 1: yields in some of the hungriest parts of the world. Today,
Speaker 1: a new green revolution would actually be recognizing that the
Speaker 1: billion people who live without meaningful access to power could
Speaker 1: simply benefit from new solar battery, mini grid AI technologies
Speaker 1: that would allow them to connect and connect quickly. We've
Speaker 1: already served about four hundred thousand people in Northeast India
Speaker 1: who are characterized by extreme poverty and with whom we've
Speaker 1: pioneered new solutions that can provide solar energy at you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere around twenty cents of killow one hour. But you
Speaker 1: didn't work, right steen this work already? Oh yeah, we've
Speaker 1: rolled out hundreds. We actually have a billion dollar joint
Speaker 1: ventor with tatap Power in media allout ten thousands of these.
Speaker 1: Not only do they work technologically, they work from a
Speaker 1: commercial perspective. The businesses, the business we started with Tata
Speaker 1: Power should and will both sustain itself and frankly be
Speaker 1: profitable over time. And uh, and most important to me
Speaker 1: is they work from a poverty of reduction perspective. We
Speaker 1: study carefully the results of what we invest in, and
Speaker 1: we know that family served by our solar mini grids
Speaker 1: in rural parts of India have doubled their incomes, have
Speaker 1: increased their employment of others have been able to take
Speaker 1: farm output and sell it at better prices because the
Speaker 1: value addition they're able to do on farm is higher,
Speaker 1: and are moving the communities out of poverty. I've seen
Speaker 1: it firsthand. We can it's life changing, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this whole idea of like disrupting.
Speaker 1: We talked about disruption all the time, right, and disruptors.
Speaker 1: This is really about disrupting the inequities. This is how
Speaker 1: you do it. Yeah, I think people get stuck. They
Speaker 1: get stucked on the idea that it has to be
Speaker 1: a sort of you know, either or that the eye
Speaker 1: is only so big and if and you've got to
Speaker 1: take it from someone to to give it to people
Speaker 1: who are at the bottom. And that's not what we've observed.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've observed that there are ways to bring technology,
Speaker 1: science and commercial markets to the world's bottom two billion
Speaker 1: people in a way that fundamentally disrupts the reality of
Speaker 1: human inequity. And the reason now is the time to
Speaker 1: do it is because this is the big disruption, This
Speaker 1: is the big dislocation, This is the big crisis, and
Speaker 1: crisis has always presented opportunity in the in the spirit
Speaker 1: of recovery. America had its strongest and most broadly shared
Speaker 1: economic period after World War Two, and we could get
Speaker 1: into why. But if we're going to bring that mindset
Speaker 1: to the global economy in this moment, we have to
Speaker 1: think differently and we have to be more ambitious on
Speaker 1: behalf of those who are suffering. Now, that idea of disruption.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times it has come
Speaker 1: up here at Bloomberg and my conversations on air over
Speaker 1: the last six seven months. That, yes, terrible crisis and
Speaker 1: we wish it hadn't happened, and certainly the impact them
Speaker 1: so many, But it's it's causing people to increase their
Speaker 1: timetable um to make changes and to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to do things better. And that sounds like this is
Speaker 1: an opportunity. What's the cost though, of doing something like
Speaker 1: this and bringing you know, eight million people who are
Speaker 1: really kind of left out in this world right now? Um,
Speaker 1: what's it cost to kind of try and bring them in? Yes, so,
Speaker 1: our estimates of the cost to specifically end energy poverty
Speaker 1: the way we're defining it is roughly twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year over the course of a decade.
Speaker 1: That may sound like a lot, although when you actually
Speaker 1: look at how much we are spending dealing with the
Speaker 1: consequences of inequity in the current crisis, it's really a
Speaker 1: very very small and very efficient commitment. Of that thirty billion,
Speaker 1: on a manual basis, about half would be commercial investment
Speaker 1: or impact investment, and about half would be true public
Speaker 1: subsidy or public investment that goes alongside a number of
Speaker 1: other activities. The if you ask that same question ten
Speaker 1: years ago or maybe fifteen years ago, I'd say ten
Speaker 1: maybe five years ago, I'd say the answer that question
Speaker 1: would have been hundreds of billions of dollars per year,
Speaker 1: and the pathway to success would have been would have
Speaker 1: fundamentally required, like governments everywhere, to start behaving better. Today,
Speaker 1: it's different. Today, you don't need that much capital, and
Speaker 1: because of the pace of technology, and because we've proven
Speaker 1: that these business models can work on a commercial basis,
Speaker 1: you really don't need although it be nice, but you
Speaker 1: really don't need every energy utility around the world to
Speaker 1: start dramatically turning around its core performance. We work with utilities,
Speaker 1: we respect the mandates they have, but this is a
Speaker 1: vision that is more disruptive than depending on just fixing
Speaker 1: the things that look broken into people. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you talking. You talk about the cost
Speaker 1: and I we Um had a story this week based
Speaker 1: on an economist different city group who tallied up and
Speaker 1: this is on a little bit of a different topic,
Speaker 1: but bias and the cost it is to our economy
Speaker 1: and and she tallied up it's like sixteen trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: And I think about, all right, so we have this
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollar a year cost, but you think about
Speaker 1: if you can give these people power and they can
Speaker 1: be part of our system, right contributors, they can become consumers.
Speaker 1: I mean, the economic impact is just kind of off
Speaker 1: the charts. Well it's economic. It's also in the spirit
Speaker 1: of the work we do with really the world's most
Speaker 1: vulnerable people. It's all doing the right thing. It's a
Speaker 1: core concept around justice and moral um, you know, and morality.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've and it was just in November and
Speaker 1: seeing some of the beneficiaries of our mini grid work
Speaker 1: in northern India, and you know, you meet, you meet.
Speaker 1: I met a young girl who you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get to go to school, doesn't have to read at
Speaker 1: night because there's no lighting. You know, what walks outdoors
Speaker 1: to fetch water and you know, in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, and you know that that leads to gender violence,
Speaker 1: sexual violence, a lack of education, and really no genuine
Speaker 1: sense of hopefulness for her future. And then we talked
Speaker 1: to her mother after the lights went on, you know,
Speaker 1: and after they became customers paying customers of a of
Speaker 1: a new technologically advanced solar mini grid that was managed
Speaker 1: by remote artificial intelligence, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: whole sense of human aspiration changes. You know, everyone has
Speaker 1: a mobile phone, everybody sees what success can look like.
Speaker 1: And then you feel that hopefulness of my daughter has
Speaker 1: a chance, and it changes the nature of human security,
Speaker 1: It changes the nature of human vulnerability. And uh. And
Speaker 1: it really is a strategy to lift up the whole
Speaker 1: concept of a green and global and inclusive recovery into
Speaker 1: a sort of something that means more about justice than
Speaker 1: just economics. No, and I totally agree. I do wander
Speaker 1: rage what's different this time around, because you know, the injustices,
Speaker 1: the inequality of the inequities um that have been laid
Speaker 1: there again because of COVID nineteen globally, They're not new.
Speaker 1: They have been around for years. You talked about how
Speaker 1: much you know, your life's work has been on global poverty.
Speaker 1: The Rock and Filmer Foundation has been focused on it
Speaker 1: for a long time. What's different this time around that
Speaker 1: you think, as you said, we kind of have this
Speaker 1: unique opportunity for disruption. What what makes you think it's
Speaker 1: different this time around? Well, things are different. The first
Speaker 1: is the moment we're in is extremely higher. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the World Bank estimates that four and twenty five million
Speaker 1: people around the world will be pushed back under an
Speaker 1: expanded definition of the poverty line. That didn't happen even
Speaker 1: during the global financial crisis, That didn't happen during the
Speaker 1: period of the Cold War. I mean that that sort
Speaker 1: of reversal of human progress is is extremely unique to
Speaker 1: this particular crisis at that scale. And for us to
Speaker 1: just sort of throw our hands up and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna lose two and a half decades of human
Speaker 1: progress in making the world more just, in creating more
Speaker 1: opportunity for families, that would be a huge mistake. So
Speaker 1: I think the first big difference is just how significant
Speaker 1: the moment we find ourselves in the second one is
Speaker 1: the race to save the climate, right. And and if
Speaker 1: you just sort of say that while the bottom two
Speaker 1: billion people don't seem to use a lot of intensive
Speaker 1: materials and therefore don't produce that much carbon, you're sort
Speaker 1: of missing the picture. Fifteen years from now, these folks
Speaker 1: will either develop their economies based on you know, Chinese
Speaker 1: investment in coal production, which is happening, you know, to
Speaker 1: the tune of a hundred and fifty giga watts around
Speaker 1: the developing world, or it will be fundamentally a green
Speaker 1: and modern economy that's much, much less problematic for the
Speaker 1: global climate situation. And these two things go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you're poor, if you're suffering, and
Speaker 1: if your choice is one or the other, you're gonna
Speaker 1: take whatever makes sense in the moment. And if we
Speaker 1: don't make a more modern, more hopeful, more green solution,
Speaker 1: a strong equivalent option to what others are offering, we
Speaker 1: were not going to be successful at protecting our climate,
Speaker 1: which does present existential threats to all of us. So
Speaker 1: I think about all of the people who are listening
Speaker 1: to this um and thinking about their role in all
Speaker 1: of this, whether they run a company, whether they run
Speaker 1: an institution, whether they're just one of the many you know,
Speaker 1: billions uh in our society. I mean, what would you
Speaker 1: say to them in terms of thinking about what you
Speaker 1: are setting out to do in the Rocketeller Foundation is
Speaker 1: setting to do? What is kind of all of our
Speaker 1: roles in this Yeah, I would say everyone has a role.
Speaker 1: So so you know, media, your your sector has a
Speaker 1: role in bringing people to a broader vision of both
Speaker 1: what's necessary and what's possible in doing it quickly. In
Speaker 1: my humble opinion, I think I think that the industrial
Speaker 1: and business sector has a tremendous role to play, especially
Speaker 1: for this particular example of the sort of energy and
Speaker 1: infrastructure community, because if you run a large energy company,
Speaker 1: you should you should have some awareness of this frontier,
Speaker 1: and you should be able to dedicate resources to where
Speaker 1: your business touches on this frontier. I'd say, if you're
Speaker 1: a young entrepreneur somewhere in the world, I don't know
Speaker 1: what market you might be interested in, but the idea
Speaker 1: that you can be part of a of a truly
Speaker 1: green revolution for the world's poorest people that will help
Speaker 1: them move up the economic ladder and do so in
Speaker 1: a green manner is so rife with real opportunity, so
Speaker 1: rich with opportunity. I mean, I met entrepreneurs that were
Speaker 1: developing the AI platforms to remotely manage these mini goods.
Speaker 1: I met entrepreneurs we're designing new battery temistries that were
Speaker 1: low cost and durable and work better in tropical fundments.
Speaker 1: I could go on and on. I mean, people developing
Speaker 1: auto rickshaws that are electric based that would serve as
Speaker 1: sources of demand for this vision of the future. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is what you should My my nine
Speaker 1: year old and my eleven year old daughter yesterday told me.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you want to do with your life?
Speaker 1: To them, I don't know if I can, but I
Speaker 1: want to solve climate change. And I was like wow,
Speaker 1: And then I said you can. You could be part
Speaker 1: of it. So I would say everyone can be part
Speaker 1: of a Governments have a huge role to play, frankly,
Speaker 1: both in getting out of the way and creating an
Speaker 1: environment that enables commercial enterprise to be successful here and
Speaker 1: in really committing itself to addressing inequity in the context
Speaker 1: of the COVID recovery and in a measurable and effective manner.
Speaker 1: And that's true, not just in India or Africa, but
Speaker 1: in the United States and everyone. I'm glad you mentioned
Speaker 1: government's role because I do wonder. I mean, we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about public private partnerships, but you really do
Speaker 1: need that to get this done right, and you do
Speaker 1: need some kind of cooperation here on a grand scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you need government to set the right tone. So
Speaker 1: I think there's like, for example, if in the United States,
Speaker 1: if if our nation embarks on a multi trillion dollar
Speaker 1: green infrastructure investment program to create jobs and support job
Speaker 1: creation through the COVID recovery, that sets a tone, and
Speaker 1: that tone, in my view, should be extended globally and
Speaker 1: and should be about using the COVID nineteen crisis to
Speaker 1: build a global economy that is safe from a climate
Speaker 1: perspective and inclusive from a development perspective. And it's achievable.
Speaker 1: And what what's so extraordinary is in normal times you
Speaker 1: would say, gosh, that's great idea, but you know these
Speaker 1: are normal times, and that's not how things work, right,
Speaker 1: not in normal times. We're in extraordinary times. We've put
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars already into fiscal and monetary policy solutions
Speaker 1: to just deal with the immediate symptoms of the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen crisis, not even to think about the recovery. There's
Speaker 1: nothing normal about this moment. This is probably the best
Speaker 1: chance we'll ever have to rethink the global economy. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's go where we started. Just to wrap up
Speaker 1: our conversation. The theme of this event is all about
Speaker 1: economic resiliency. I mean, that's the end game in terms
Speaker 1: of what you're trying to do, you know, give people
Speaker 1: a better life, right and and really have kind of
Speaker 1: a future to look forward too. Yeah, I I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more. I think the basic idea that everyone should have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, universal opportunity is an appropriate guide post for
Speaker 1: shaping our future. And to do that in a manner
Speaker 1: that is green and protective of our climate is really
Speaker 1: the only way we could achieve that. And the great
Speaker 1: news is, you know, people have never been more innovative
Speaker 1: and more capable from the perspective of science and technology
Speaker 1: influencing the world around them, and crisis has always asked
Speaker 1: us to reshape our societies. We just have to stand
Speaker 1: up and really take advantage of this one. All right.
Speaker 1: Just I do have one last question. So five years,
Speaker 1: where do you think of all of this falls into
Speaker 1: place in terms of your commitment, and everybody else gets involved.
Speaker 1: What could this mean for these million people, or at
Speaker 1: least a portion of them. Yeah, I think you can
Speaker 1: see progress very very quickly. We we what we've seen
Speaker 1: with our customers from these programs, not just in India
Speaker 1: but in Myanmar and Africa and parts of Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: is the people react very quickly. Um. You know, you
Speaker 1: start giving people access to modern economic infrastructure, always on reliable,
Speaker 1: affordable electricity, and what do they do? They do? Thinks
Speaker 1: they start businesses, They hire people that I'm at a
Speaker 1: carpenter who said, now that I know the power is
Speaker 1: going to be on, I bought power tools, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: And now I have power tools, I can make more
Speaker 1: furniture and I'm hiring more people. It just happens naturally.
Speaker 1: So five years from now, I'd like to see to
Speaker 1: three million of the of the eight hundred million target
Speaker 1: have already moved out of poverty or at least close
Speaker 1: on that path. And in doing so, I hope that
Speaker 1: great movement creates the sort of positive feedback loop and
Speaker 1: inspiration to allow politicians, investors, leaders and young people to
Speaker 1: say Hey, we can get all the way there together.
Speaker 1: That was the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr Rajiv Shah.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra. Be sure
Speaker 1: to listen to Bloomberg Business Week Radio aeron live Monday
Speaker 1: through Friday at two pm Wall Street Time. On Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and this is Bloomberg two