SPEECH BY HER EXCELLENCY MARGARET KENYATTA,

FIRST LADY OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA AT THE

THUNDERBIRD SCHOOL OF GLOBAL MANAGEMENT,
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, US ON MARCH 16TH, 2016.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon,

I am pleased and excited to be with you today. Being here,

on a campus that is widely recognised as a leading
educational institution, I know that I am surrounded by
some of the worlds brightest young minds. All of you
students, by virtue of being here, have already
demonstrated that you are intellectual luminaries; smart,
engaged and full of ideas.
But as you all know, being a trail blazer in business,
requires more than a capable mind. Boldness,
innovativeness, a spirit of humility, and a capacity to
critically question the status quo; to move beyond
business as usual and dare to do things differently, are
all required attributes.
So, I know that when I look out at you, Im looking at the
trail blazers, pace-setters and pioneers that can drive this
age of global business, and shape our century, and our
world, for good.
Sadly, though, our world too often operates in a false
dichotomy that separates the bottom line of business from
the high-call of doing good. Too often, driving social
change is seen as the sole preserve of philanthropists,
charities and non-governmental organisations instead of
being seen as our common charge. Too often, the
transformative agendas are seen as the duty of
government and not the responsibility of the global
electorate or individual choices.

And within businesses, doing good is a kind of peripheral,

optional concern; the work of conscience is relegated to
CSR departments, and it is often not considered core to
business culture.
We live in an age where being a big profitable enterprise is
seen to be incompatible with doing good. Where big
businesses have sometimes created big problems rather
than being a possible means of positive change. But all of
these perspectives or realities of the world and of business
are ironic. Because business is, by nature, a powerful force
for driving social change. Business is inherently about
solving problems and meeting needs and embracing
challenges as opportunities.
That is what the best businesses do: they find a problem
to solve, a need to meet and a gap to fill. They are driven
by our demand. They dont exist for business sake and
contrary to what some may think, theyre driven by more
than the desire to bump up the bottom line. They exist for
people. They add value to people. And in the process of
solving problems and meeting needs, of filling gaps and
adding value, businesses change millions of lives by
providing jobs and incomes, dignity and choice to the
individuals that they employ, while providing products and
services that count, to their customers. Businesses benefit
everybody and they are by definition crucial to building
sustainable change.
So I am glad that today, I get to talk to you - as future
international business leaders - about a problem that still
needs solving, a need that is not effectively being met and
a gap that the world still needs to fill.
Across the world, there is an urgent need for universal
access to quality, affordable healthcare. Globally, more
than six million children die annually before their fifth
birthday and of those, four out of every five deaths occur
in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia with children
born into poverty being twice as likely to die before the
age of five.

Today, only 50% of women in developing regions receive

the recommended amount of health care they need and
HIV is still the leading cause of death for women of
reproductive age worldwide.
In my own country 510 out of every 100,000 mothers lose
their lives in pregnancy related complications. In 2014,
20% of children aged 12 - 23 months, had not been fully
vaccinated with BCG, measles, pentavalent, polio, and
pneumococcal vaccines, nearly 30% had not received all
basic vaccinations, and 2% had not received any vaccines
at all.
Today, preventable and treatable diseases including acute
respiratory infections, malaria, and diarrhea continue to be
a leading cause of child morbidity and mortality in Kenya.
Though there has been tremendous progress in the
prevention of new HIV infections among children in Kenya,
with 87,000 HIV positive women getting pregnant annually
there are 13,000 new HIV infection cases among children
every year and 11,000 HIV positive children dying
annually due to lack of access to antiretroviral treatments.
One of the chief global sustainable development goals
with respect to health is achieving universal health
coverage, including financial risk protection, access to
quality essential health-care services and access to safe,
effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and
vaccines for all.
The world has made so much progress in bridging the gap
in access to health care, but theres still so much to be
done. A world where access to health is exclusive, is a less
productive, less efficient, less innovative and less
prosperous world. Improving access to quality health care
isnt just fundamentally humane, its economically
prudent.
In this respect, I have spent the last three years doing my
part towards working on healthcare issues in Kenya. I
truly believe that a healthy nation is everyones businessit requires inclusivity from all sectors.

In 2014 I launched Beyond Zero; an initiative that seeks to

use innovative fundraising methods, to raise capital for
the purchase, and distribution of mobile clinics across the
country. This initiative supports the governments efforts
to make available free maternal health to its citizens. The
initiative collaborates with the county governments
-similar to your federal government, efforts to offer better
health options and bring health closer to its people.

The Beyond Zero campaign is an example of national,

public-private partnership. It is private sector driven and
has succeeded because of our partners believe that
ensuring human health, is a worthwhile investment.
So, if you wonder whether big business make a difference
to health issues in Kenya and the world, I am here to tell
you it can. And businesses can do more than donate to
worthy causes, or partner with Government. Businesses
can try create products and services that make a
significant impact on health issues in the world. Two
businesses in Kenya come to mind as examples of this:
Equity Bank and Safaricom, a telecommunications
company. Now, a bank and a telecommunications[1]
company arent necessarily obvious agents of social
change, but both these companies, by focusing on
financial inclusion, have empowered poor people to take
charge of their health, by enabling them to save, borrow
and invest.

So I want to end by just asking each one of you to consider

a simple question: what will you do? How will you disrupt
the world and drive change? You have been blessed with
incredible resources, and a wealth of knowledge. You have
been given much, and much is required of you. I want to
end by challenging you to turn your attention to the
daunting issues of the 21st century; dare to use all the
resources at your disposal, to build sustainable solutions
that count for decades to come. Let that, be your legacy.

Thank you for your invitation and thank you very much for
your attention.