Day 1 at Davos 2022

This transcript has been generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio.

Robin Pomeroy: It's Monday, day one of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. This is Radio Davos.

More than 2,000 leaders from government, business, civil society, academia and the media are meeting in person for the first time since COVID-19 stopped the world.

They're discussing the biggest issues from geopolitics, to climate change, inequality, technology, the future of jobs — all as history is at a turning point. Watch all the action live or on catch up at wef.ch/wef22 and across social media using the hashtag #Wef22.

I'm Robin Pomeroy, podcast editor at the World Economic Forum and, with daily podcasts from the heart of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting 2022, this is Radio Davos.

Welcome to Davos. And for the first time since we created Radio Davos, we are actually talking to you from Davos. It's usually a snow-covered ski resort high in the Swiss Alps. For the first time in the more than 50-year history of these Davos meetings, the World Economic Forum's annual meeting is being held not in January, but in spring. The pandemic has meant there's been no physical Davos meeting for the last two Januarys. So this really is a remarkable event. The first major in-person meeting, really, of its kind, perhaps of any kind since COVID stopped business as usual, and how different the world looks now. On these daily podcasts every morning we will be looking forward to the day's action and picking up on the highlights as they happen through the week.

Each day I'll be joined by different co-hosts, and I'm delighted to say that joining me here in the Radio Davos studio, which is — if you're not here, you haven't seen it right in the heart of the conference centre — is Nzinga Qunta.

Nzinga is a news anchor for SABC, the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Tell us about yourself and what you do in South Africa.

Nzinga Qunta: Thanks so much for having me on Radio Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: So pleased you’re here.

Nzinga Qunta: I'm a business news anchor based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I work for the public broadcaster, and every day on lunchtime, I take people through the biggest economic events of the day, do some interviews. So that's the one aspect of what I do. The reason that I'm here, one of the reasons that I'm here, is that I moderate high level events with CEOs, heads of state in South Africa and in parts of the world. So I'm very excited to be attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meetings for the second time, and the first time as a moderator.

Robin Pomeroy: Right. When was your other Davos? Was it the last physical Davos?

Nzinga Qunta: So I came in 2019.

Robin Pomeroy: The one before the last one.

Nzinga Qunta: Yeah, it was very cold. Very, very cold. And they said to me this year: “you know, it's going to be so exciting. You're going to be in your sandals.”

Then I take the temperatures and I thought our definitions are very different in Europe and Africa.

Robin Pomeroy: I was out there today. I saw someone in his flip flops, actually. Yeah, but it is not what you'd call a hot day and it's actually pouring with rain right now. Yes.

So it's not just the fact there's no snow. In the preview episode to this, the president of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brenda, said “the world has changed so much.”

And the theme for this meeting is the turning point in history. I mean, just on a personal level, does it feel strange for you to be at an actual in-person meeting?

Nzinga Qunta: It is quite strange because I think as our worlds have changed, we also adapt very differently to them. So where I'm from, in South Africa, we are still wearing masks everywhere. And so when we got to Switzerland, a colleague and I were walking around and were the only people with masks, because we've all changed how we deal with the pandemic. But I think it's very good to have in-person events, especially because of the kind of measures that are being taken to ensure that everyone is safe. We all tested when we got here, we tested before we left, and connection and collaboration, I think are going to come out of these meetings. And people are so excited to see people in real life away from the screen and away from “please unmute yourself” and “I can't hear you.”

So I'm very excited and I think it is going to do something different. There's an enthusiasm, perhaps, that there wouldn't have been as much of if we had not been in the meetings for over two years.

Robin Pomeroy: Yeah, I agree. So let's talk about what's happening today.

Day one of the Annual Meeting. There are going to be dozens and dozens of sessions on some very big, important issues. But the one issue I think, certainly on day one that will stand out, will be the war in Ukraine.

So, for people listening to this podcast as it goes out on day one at 11:15, it will be the special address from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He'll be speaking down the line. And then, at 11:45, there's a session with Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Economy for Ukraine, who will be speaking in person. And at 12:30 there's a session called a discussion with the Klitschkos, and that is Vitaly and Vladimir Klitschko, famous names, world champion boxers now turned, certainly for Vitali Klitschko, is the mayor of Kyiv, and he'll be here. They'll both be her in person, which is quite something.

From your reporting point of view, you're mostly reporting on business news, but there's no getting away from this situation in Ukraine. How is it seen? How how is it being reported in South Africa, in Africa in general?

Nzinga Qunta: Absolutely. So when it comes to the war in Ukraine, what we're seeing from a South African perspective is that we know that our wheat prices are going to go up and our oil prices are going to go up. A large part of our society is indigent and struggles and is dependent on wheat foods as their staples. Those prices are going to go up, which is going to exacerbate our economic challenges in South Africa.

We have very low economic growth, we have very high unemployment, and people are struggling on a day-to-day basis in order to make ends meet. So that's going to impact us even more. So the way that we are approaching that is looking at the impact that it will have.

There's also a commodities boom in South Africa because of the restrictions on Russia exporting to different countries. So, some of our miners are very happy with the amount of business that they are doing there. So I don't work on the politics desk, but obviously, we are reporting as the public broadcaster, what is taking place.

On the economics desk, we are kind of looking at how it affects you, because I think even though the war is so far geographically away from us, it impacts us on a day to day level. And obviously, when you also look at consumer price inflation going up, it's doing so almost everywhere around the world. But in South Africa, we’re feeling it in particular when it comes to our fuel prices, our food prices, and just the cost of living increasing a little bit more.

Robin Pomeroy: So, when it comes to the economy, today the World Economic Forum will be launching the Chief Economists Outlook. And I'll be playing a short interview with Sadia Zaidi when we finish talking to each other. This is a report that takes stock of the global economy. They are they ask global experts on the global economy every quarter or so. And it's quite a different report this year because of, first, the pandemic, but particularly Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Anyway, talking of other economic things, here’s another session. At 4:15 p.m. Swiss time, it is called ‘Trade, Now What?’ It has got India's commerce industry minister, it's got the EU trade commissioner and it's got and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who's the Director General of the World Trade Organisation.

So, there's always headwinds in trade, isn't there? But I think, in terms of export bans, food export bans, this kind of thing — these are some of the discussions that are going to be happening.

So as a business reporter in South Africa, is trade a big issue that you report on?

Nzinga Qunta: We do. We look at trade on the continent in particular. I had a slot called Africa Trade Brief, where we interviewed ministers of trade from across the continent, CEOs, small business owners on the many aspects of trade on the continent. And obviously the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, which has been lauded as one of the biggest things to happen to trade in the world, will be the biggest trade bloc if it's successfully implemented. So we do focus on that.

But of course, like we were saying earlier, these issues that are happening outside of our country affect our trade and affect our prices. So it is something that we do focus on.

Robin Pomeroy: Right. You mentioned the African Free Trade Agreement that was trumpeted as a big thing two or three years ago, when it was coming into force. Has it made any difference? Has anything changed?

Nzinga Qunta: It was implemented last year and countries are ratifying the agreements and building those up. And so that Wamkele Mene, who's the secretary-general and leading that of the A.U, has said that we cannot afford to fail with this.

There is progress being made. Most countries have ratified. I don't want to say the exact number, but I know that it's close to 40 of the countries on our continent — which is the majority of them — that have ratified the agreement.

Unfortunately, it's not just about ratifying, because you need to make sure that when you are trading the infrastructure between the different blocs, and the different parts of the continent, is there. So you can get things between country A and country B to take advantage of the relaxed tariffs. That's a challenge that I think maybe in five years we can start to say: “okay, we can see progress.”

But there is progress and it is being implemented. It's not just a talk shop. I think Wamkele is quite brilliant at what he does, and he's quite a focused leader. So under him, I think that there will be results and it won't be one of these projects which is lauded and then forgotten about, because we do need that as a continent. We have the capacity, we have the capability and there is political will as well.

Robin Pomeroy: So, let's look ahead to today and to the rest of the week coming up. Are there particular sessions — you'll be moderating some of them so you might not want to favour some over others — if there is anything particularly you're looking forward to, what would that be?

Nzinga Qunta: Yes. So I'm moderating two sessions here. We're looking at the future of health care and taking a look back at the lessons that we can learn from the COVID 19 pandemic, with some really interesting role players from the pharmaceutical industry, access to medicines and making sure that we really drill down and look at what we have learned from the inequalities that have come. It's not a fluffy, “oh, you know, we, we are coming out of this pandemic and we've learned so many good lessons” — because we've seen vaccine inequality, we've seen what people have described as vaccine apartheid and people really getting left behind. And we should have learned lessons from the AIDS pandemic, for instance. But it seems we haven't.

So that's one of these sessions I'll be chairing at 8:15.

I’m also doing a panel on preparing for Africa's growing global role. We've just spoken about the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement and the potential for that. Speaking to the prime minister of Cote d'Ivoire, speaking to the CEO of a massive tech company, a woman in South African woman, which is a very big deal, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, and then speaking to somebody who's involved in petroleum in Nigeria.

I'm really looking forward to that because we are an exciting continent, we’re a powerful continent, and I think the way people sometimes see us is: “Ah shame, that continent is still getting it together.” But we are quite together. And I think that panel, I'm very excited about showcasing our continent on a world stage. That panel is going to be taking place on Tuesday.

And then I'm doing one with UNAIDS, and Open Society. Also (discussing) lessons from the pandemic and taking a look at inequality and how to fix that. We've got a Nobel Peace prize-winning economist in that session. So I'm just also very excited about that.

Robin Pomeroy: And the other things outside of your own sessions, other things you'd want to hear.

Nzinga Qunta: I'm just looking forward to things that perhaps I don't have experience in, things that are outside of the purview of what I report on or what I anchor on on a day-to-day basis. So I'll be looking at skills of the future, that's a panel that I'm looking forward to. I'm going to be looking at fashion because, you know, on the one hand, it's seen as a very frivolous thing, but it's not — it affects supply chains. It's about labour, good labour practices, economies, jobs.

So I'm looking forward to bouncing around the World Economic Forum, listening in to sessions and interacting with people that on a day-to-day basis I wouldn't get to interact with because I'd be inside a studio. So, that's what I'm looking forward to.

Robin Pomeroy: Yeah, so am I. Well, thanks very much for selling that up for us. Thank you. To my co-host today on Zynga Qunta. Did I do it again?

Nzinga Qunta: You did. Close.

Robin Pomeroy: Close.

Nzinga Qunta: Thank you so much Robin for having me. It's been so interesting being here and being part of the World Economic Forum in various ways.

Robin Pomeroy: Great. And I hope to see you around this week.

As I mentioned to Nzinga there, later today the World Economic Forum will publish its Chief Economist Outlook. And here to tell us about it is Saadia Zahidi, head of the World Economic Forum's Centre for the New Economy and Society. Saadia, tell us why this is such an extraordinary moment to be publishing this assessment of the global economy.

Saadia Zahidi: So, there's three things that have really come together, right?

Absolutely, the war in Ukraine, and all of the after-effects of that. But let's also not forget that over the last two and a half years, we have been in the midst of a pandemic that is still continuing and there still continue to be surges in different parts of the world, lockdowns in different parts of the world. All of that together is basically creating this economic crisis that we are starting to see.

And I think we have to actually call it that. And that's what we find also from our Chief Economists Outlook, the 50 chief economists that have contributed to developing this, that we are in for a very turbulent era.

Robin Pomeroy: And that's what you'll be publishing later today, the chief economist outlook and this is something the World Economic Forum has been doing for a long time, can just give us a bit of the background. Tell us what usually happens in a normal time. How often do you produce it? Who contributes to it? What are you aiming to do with it?

Saadia Zahidi: Every quarter we bring together the 50 or so chief economists from various international organisations, from big banks, from big technology companies, from big consumer goods companies, and they're all, of course, all over the world. So they have a very good global picture of what is happening in different parts of the world. And they tell us through a survey, but also through a lot of qualitative discussions every quarter where they think the economy is headed. And this year, we've got sort of ten key questions on where things are going, and that's what we're presenting today.

Robin Pomeroy: And so this must be a report, an outlook unlike any other. I mean, in what ways do you think this one will be different?

Saadia Zahidi: Well, there's such a high degree of uncertainty, and I think that's what we're seeing. So our opening piece here is that we are in the midst of a perfect storm. And again, we have to acknowledge that, because of these three things that have come together and very little room really for policymakers to act, they have an extremely difficult balancing act that they have to get to.

Robin Pomeroy: I know that the report isn't published yet, and you might not want to give away all the headlines before it is later today, but could you give us some idea of what the key trends are?

Saadia Zahidi: So most economists are expecting much lower economic activity relative to today when it comes to Europe, when it comes to China, when it comes to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, a lot of concern about weak or very weak growth in some cases.

Now, at the same time, there is a lot of concern about inflation, and that is going, of course, hand in hand with real wages going down. So an astonishing 90% of the chief economist that we have spoken to believe that real wages will go down across the board globally. And, of course, this is not surprising because almost all of them are also predicting that inflation will be moderate, high or very high in most of the world, most notably in the United States and in Europe, where they're expecting high or very high inflation relative to today in the next year.

Robin Pomeroy: I suppose in a meeting like this, this is day one at Davos 2022, with this outlook, this will be food for discussion, I suppose, by policymakers, by company leaders, by equality, poverty campaigners. All of these people who are here in Davos, they're going to really be looking at this outlook and saying there are some very important decisions that need to be taken.

Saadia Zahidi: This is exactly why we're starting out with this publication and with a lot of the economic discussions on day one of the meeting. Because let's take this away from the technical terms around real wages or around inflation. What we're talking about here is that, essentially, people are not able to afford the same goods and services that they could before.

This is going to create a cost of living crisis. And it's going to make in particular two areas — food and fuel — very hard for people to be able to afford. And if you're already living at the bare margin, this is going to be devastating in terms of its consequences. And so the leaders that are gathered here today in discussions around food prices, around energy prices, around the global economic outlook, many of them are going to be tackling this exact issue, approaching it from their specific different angles.

Robin Pomeroy: Is there any actual hard data you can give us, a glimpse from this report?

Saadia Zahidi: So we asked the chief economists what they thought about food insecurity over the next three years. And we asked them for different parts of the world, different countries, different regions.

They are expecting in the Middle East and North Africa, in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia for the outlook to be highly insecure or insecure.

Now, this means millions and millions of people will be affected by this coming food crisis. And that is why the action we have to take has to be taken now, starting here in Davos.

Robin Pomeroy: And if you're in Davos or you're watching events here anywhere in the world, you can follow that and everything else happening on day one, on our website weforum.org. Thanks to Saadia.

Now here in Davos, the team I work with producing social media for the World Economic Forum are packing in as many interviews as we can with as many of the interesting people who we're finding here. My colleague Anna Bruce Lockhart snagged a few minutes with Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund at a time of huge global economic uncertainty.

Kristalina Georgieva: We are experiencing a crisis upon a crisis: first the pandemic, now the war in Ukraine. That is a major setback for the recovery of the world economy. As a result, we had to downgrade 143 countries for their growth prospects for 2022 and bring global growth from 4.9 [percent increase], where we projected it in October last year to 3.6 where it is today. And on top of it, what we see is a very significant acceleration of inflation in many, many countries.

What does that mean? That central banks have to take decisive action to bring back price stability, but when they do that, when they tighten financial conditions for everybody that has a burden of debt, the ability to service this debt is more expensive. For many countries, 2020 was the year of increased debt, and that particularly applies for low-income countries, where today 60% of them are either at debt distress or next to it. With high interest rates, the conditions would be very difficult.

What we also face is significant increase of commodity prices, mostly because of the war in Ukraine. And that is terrible when it comes down to the price of food for poor people and especially poor people in poor countries. Last but not least, China is wrestling with the pandemic in a way that is destructive for the world economy, because of interruption of supply chains. And that adds to the downside risks for 2022.

Robin Pomeroy: Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF. One last interview I'd like to play a little bit from: Nick Clegg dropped into the booth here in Davos. He's the former UK Deputy Prime Minister and now he's President for Global Affairs at Meta. I'll post the whole interview as an episode very soon, but here are a couple of teaser clips. I asked Nick Clegg, who handles global policy and regulatory issues for the company formerly known as Facebook, whether he agrees with the view that social media companies' algorithms manipulate us in sinister ways. Spoiler alert: he doesn't agree.

Nick Clegg: It's an assertion which is often made and very rarely proven for the very good reason that that is not what our algorithms do. It's certainly a sort of fashionable narrative, isn't it, to say that companies like Meta use algorithms to sort of craftily spoon feed extreme and hateful content to people to keep them hooked on our services, because that's the way that we can sell ads and so on. Really, every link in that chain is wrong.

Robin Pomeroy: I asked Nick Clegg: what is this thing called the metaverse and what might it be used for?

Nick Clegg: The idea is of an embodied presence. And if you can imagine what could be done with that technology in the future, it would obviate the need for mass commuting into offices because we'd be able to work together as if we were in offices together without having to commute physically. It would allow teachers to take a class of 12-year-olds to walk around ancient Rome. It would allow us, a surgeon, to educate a group of budding medical students on how to do surgery as if they're right there in the lab. I think the applications really are very exciting.

But you ask in one, five, ten years — this is a long journey. This is not going to happen overnight. And I think the exciting thing, certainly for people like me, is that we can have the ethical, moral, societal, regulatory debates now rather than bolting them on as an afterthought, which which is what we've done, if you like, with the first kind of wave of the internet.

Robin Pomeroy: Nick Clegg, president for Global Affairs at Meta. He had lots more to say about social media literacy. Makes sure you don't miss the whole interview. There’s an easy way to do that: subscribe to our Davos Review podcast and it will also mean if you do it now, you'll get daily coverage tomorrow and the next day and the next.

You can follow all the action here at Davos live from across social media using the hashtag #wef22. This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me Robin Pomeroy, with my co-host Nzinga Qunta. Editing was by Joey Johansson. Studio production was by Connor Smith.

We’ll be back tomorrow on day two of Davos 22. See you then.