MNEmerge project explores how multinational companies could help in eliminating poverty

07.02.2014

Instead of trying to combat global poverty by giving foreign aid, more permanent results could be achieved by educating local people to help themselves, which could be accomplished by the means of multinational enterprises. Companies possess money, knowledge and innovations to help the citizens and governments of developing countries to improve their living conditions. The MNEmerge research team studies how multinational enterprises operate in developing countries, what kind of benefits the companies get from operating there, and how the cooperation between companies and decision-makers could be strengthened.

​The Pan-European Institute at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku is taking part in MNEmerge (A Framework Model on MNE's Impact on Global Development Challenges in Emerging Markets), a three-year (2014–2016) international research project funded by the EU under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The project is coordinated by the Lappeenranta University of Technology and among the project partners are top universities around the world: the University of Oxford, King’s College London and Brunel University from the UK, and the United Nations University from the Netherlands. Other project partners include Council for Scientific and Industrial Research from Ghana, INESC P&D Brazil, and Public Health Foundation of India. The overall project budget is EUR 2.6 million.
 
In MNEmerge, the impacts of the operations of multinational companies are mirrored against the United Nations Millennium Development Goals which are common development targets for the whole world. The project includes field research in three countries, Brazil, Ghana and India. In Brazil, the objective is to study how rural communities could be electrified in a cost-effective manner. In Brazil, the states’ grids are controlled by European companies and they are obliged to electrify the whole country. The research in Ghana focuses on assessing the positive and negative impacts of the operations of Chinese large enterprises in Africa. In India, in turn, the aim is to study how sanitation and hygiene could be enhanced in rural communities in order to improve people’s health and capacity for work. Dutch companies have already constructed local water and sewerage systems in India.
 
For further information on the project, please visit the MNEmerge website or contact Project Researcher Hanna Mäkinen, hasoma@utu.fi, tel. +358 2 333 9563.
 
 
Created 07.02.2014 | Updated 07.02.2014