Participants in an interactive workspace session at the World Economic Forum on Africa Wednesday discussed ways to mitigate the impact of global risks that are most salient to Africa.

"It's almost impossible to separate one risk and think of it in isolation. In a highly interconnected world, these risks manifest themselves in highly systemic ways," said Sean M. Cleary, managing director of Strategic Concepts, South Africa.

The 2006 risk landscape is dominated by high impact headline risks, such as terrorism, oil price shocks, potential pandemics and climate change, which are increasingly well understood.

The participants devised the potential worst-case scenarios and proposed ways to mitigate their impact.

Those who focused on terrorism and oil price hike said improvement of governance and better deployment of oil revenues to alleviate social conditions would go a long way towards mitigating this risk.

The consensus from the panel discussion on the topic came to that government needs to create a policy framework to plan for climate change while it is the responsibility of business to respond to it.

The Geneva-based World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships for the global public interest.
 
The forum and its partners in the Global Risk Program have identified core areas where risk mitigation may be improved through collaboration between the private and public sectors.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2006)