Digital Financing of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

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Digital Financing of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Financial Technology, a historic opportunity to reshape finance and help solve some of the most pressing issues we face today.

Billions of people around the world are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic using digital tools to work, spend and socialize. In August 2020, the UN Secretary’s Task Force on Digital Financing for the Sustainable Development Goals published a report on how digital tools could also support the financing of the SDGs and, ultimately, place citizens in control of finance and ensure that it meets their needs, today and in the future. Conscious FinTech contributed to the report by mapping the German FinTech companies that promote the SDGs.

We are proud to welcome Simon Zadek, Sherpa of the Task Force on Digital Financing, to learn more about his work experience and discuss what we - as individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses and investors - can do in order to contribute to achieving the SDGs through digital finance. There will be a Q&A, so bring your questions, and get engaged!

When

12 November 2020

16:00 - 18:00

Where

Streaming will take place right here on our website. No need to register!

About the speakers

Simon Zadek - Sherpa of UN Secretary General's Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals

Simon is an independent advisor and writer dedicated to sustainable economic development and sustainable business activity. Besides joining the UN’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs, he advises leading international organisations, such as the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the World Economic Forum, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development and co-directed the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.

Simon holds a PhD in Economics from Brunel University and has been Senior Fellow at the Centre for Government and Business of Harvard Kennedy School and Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Singapore Management University.

In 2003 he was named as one of the World Economic Forum’s “Global Leaders of Tomorrow”.

Piet Kleffmann - Digital Ambassador, KfW Development Bank

Piet dedicated his career to international development cooperation. He currently serves as Digital Ambassador in the recently established Innovation, Digitalisation and Communication division of KfW Development Bank. His particular focus is on the development of new applications of blockchain technology in development cooperation.

From 2014-2018 he lead the team Governance and Natural Resources South of Africa and together with the Digital Office of the KfW bank group he developed the blockchain-based approach TruBudget to better control the public financing in developing countries. In 2018 he took over the management of the TaskForce TruBudget.

Before that Piet served as regional representative of the KfW Development Bank and managed the organisations' office in Kenia for 5 years.

Leonhard Nima - Moderation

Leonhard is a serial social entrepreneur, Co-Founder of N3XTCODER and former Adjunct Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Hult International Business School in San Francisco and London. He previously worked for Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus at The Grameen Creative Lab as Head of Academia.

The Task Force

Established by the UN Secretary General António Guterres in 2018, the Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs was mandated to identify, recommend and catalyze ways to harness digitalization in accelerating financing of the SDGs. It brought together 17 leaders from across finance, technology, policy, regulation and international development and engaged with hundreds of financial institutions, governments and regulators, civil society organizations, think tanks and expert groups.

In its final report The People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future, published in August 2020, the task force sets out an ambitious Action Agenda. Specifically, the task force identifies five catalytic opportunities for businesses, policy-makers and those governing finance to follow and deliver on these opportunities. Furthermore, it shows how digital finance can be used in ways that empower citizens as tax-payers and investors in envisaging a digital transformation at scale that better aligns people’s money with their needs, collectively expressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

About the organisers

Our mission is to help impact-driven projects to succeed through technology. We aim for all our projects and partners to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Through our FinTech4Impact Challenge we focus on the potential of financial technology to create impact at scale.

The goal of our programme is to support purpose-driven FinTech entrepreneurs and startups to build their products and grow their businesses by providing them with tailored hands-on support and a diverse ecosystem of financial services and impact stakeholders.

Financial services are at the heart of our global economy, and the sector has experienced a remarkable transformation in recent years fuelled by digital innovations. It is vital to look at those developments and achievements through a social lens and develop ways to utilise them to create meaningful social impact, particularly in such demanding times.

Conscious Fintech Meetup is a series of events by the Institute for Social Banking, the Fair Finance Institute and the Impact Hub Berlin with the aim to open up a general discussion about conscious and impact-driven innovation in banking and finance. Conscious Fintech addresses questions such as: How innovative are innovators when it comes to responsibility, participation, transparency, fairness and trust? Are they able to bring change in the areas of the financial sector where mostly needed - its impact on society?

Learn more about Conscious Fintech here.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation Baden-Württemberg is an agency for green ideas and projects and a reform policy workshop for the future of the state. It is part of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Network, headquartered in Berlin, with international offices in over than 30 countries and independent foundations in every state.

We stand for democracy and human rights, solidarity and justice, ecology as well as for a fair social and sustainable economic order. We foster a European Union of its citizens, social emancipation and gender equality, and political and social participation of migrants and minorities.

Digital sovereignty will shape our future and is a cardinal topic of the Foundation.

Learn more about the Heinrich Böll Foundation Baden-Württemberg here.