Jack Ma, Alibaba’s high profile co-founder and chairman, touted his vision of a better and more inclusive globalisation on the stage of the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland.
Ma, an eloquent and frequent public speaker, argued in his speech at the forum that the globalisation in the last 20 years was controlled by mere 60,000 companies around the globe, which according to him is not inclusive enough.
“Imagine if we could expand that to 60 million businesses,” he said to the audience attending the Digitalising Emerging Markets session, and called upon “countries where the government has the wisdom and the courage to support small business.”
Ma’s globalization rhetoric is aligned with the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiative he has been advocating.
Born as a brainchild of Ma back in 2016, the eWTP aims to promote public-private dialogue to foster a more effective and efficient policy and business environment to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in cross-border electronic trade.
Rwanda was the first African country that joined this platform in October last year.
For instance, farmers in Rwanda are already selling coffee to Chinese customers directly through the platform, which facilitates tariff-free trade for transactions of less than US$1 million.
The Rwandan Government sees it as a way to increase inclusivity, according to President Paul Kagame.
Editor: Ben Jiang