16th OJA Eminent Speaker Breakfast Event with Dr Martyn Davies
Guest speaker: Dr Martyn Davies (Managing Director, Emerging Markets & Africa, Deloitte)
Topic: “The Quest for Inclusive Growth in Africa”
The OJA is focused on creating a platform through which OJs can get together, reconnect, and network on a business level. We aim to create regular events that will allow OJs from similar or different industries to come together. These events have no fundraising element and are purely networking functions. The last 15 events since our launch in October 2013 were a great success.
Background on the speaker:
Dr Martyn Davies heads Deloitte Africa’s Automotive Sector business as well leading Japan Services Group and China Services Group for the Firm. He is a member of the Deloitte global Firm’s Insight Advisory Group as well as the Deloitte Economics team.
Prior to joining Deloitte, Martyn founded Frontier Advisory, a strategy and corporate finance advisory firm that was subsequently acquired by Deloitte.
Over his career, he has been a trusted advisor to executives at a large array of multinational firms on their market entry & engagement strategies in emerging markets and Africa. He has also conducted a large amount of advisory work on behalf of the public sector having advised a number of governments in numerous regions.
OJA feedback:
We were privileged to have renowned Emerging Markets Expert Dr. Martin Davies (Managing Director, Delloitte Emerging Markets and Africa) as the guest speaker for the 16th Eminent Speaker Series Breakfast on the 19th of September.
Dr. Davies discussed the concept of Inclusive Growth for Africa and illustrated how economic and political shocks in countries such as South Korea and China had resulted in structural economic changes that totally transformed their economies. One of the key themes was that many wealth countries such as Switzerland, Singapore and South Korea have no physical resources, yet have exceptionally high GDP and low inequality. It was fascinating to see how a country like South Korea, has literally transformed itself in just 20 years (post the 1997 Emerging Market Crisis) from an IMF bailout into a manufacturing and exporting power house with the highest number of PHD’s per capita in the world.
The discussion was particularly relevant given the current emerging market and local economic and political challenges that South Africa faces. Dr. Davies provided some thought-provoking views that we hope our country’s leadership will consider and understand as we attempt to navigate through the difficult circumstances that the country finds itself in.
We encourage all Old Johannians to join us at these breakfasts, if you would like to be invited please can you send an email to info@oja.co.za.
Andrew Duvenage (Alston 1999)
OJA committee member