The past couple of months have shone a spotlight on South Africa’s approach to procuring Covid-19 vaccines. I’ve seen the topic debated across a range of media platforms, both locally and internationally, with some intensity. To me, the central context of the debate is emblematic of the deeper ethical conundrums that exist in our current global markets. For example, should private medical aids be allowed to procure and administer vaccines to their members ahead of government programs? Or, should private vaccine manufacturers be allowed to sell their products on the open market to the highest bidder?

For business, these debates can be polarising, with profits and principles being setup as mutually exclusive ideas. Reconciling these ideas in the context of economics and business has a long history that spans the thinking of Adam Smith through to the more modern ideas of corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, and more recently “Shared Value”.

Shared value is a technical term first proposed by Harvard Business Professors, Michael Porter, and Mark Kramer. It refers to “a management strategy in which companies find business opportunities in solving social and environmental problems”. The central premise is that the competitiveness of a company and the health of the communities and the environment around it are mutually dependent. Porter and Kramer say that the context for business is changing to one of increased volatility across economic, societal, and environmental systems and, as a consequence, the most effective business strategy to navigate such volatile times is one that solves for shared value outcomes.

They go further and suggest that businesses focused on addressing shared societal, environmental, and economic outcomes have the power to unleash the next wave of global growth and redefine capitalism. They made these statements in 2011, three years after the 2008 global financial crisis, an event that precipitated some earnest reflection on the role and purpose of financial systems and their interconnectivity with society and the environment.

This recognition of the inter-connectivity between markets, society, and the environment, is something that the vaccine debate has shone a light on. As an idea “shared value”, has grown up alongside concepts such as responsible investment and green growth. What connects these ideas is an understanding of the powerful role the markets and capital flows can play in solving for long-term social and biophysical system resilience.

President Ramaphosa recently spoke to this idea of interconnectivity in his speech at the World Economic Forum. The President expressed his concern about the problem of ‘vaccine nationalism’ and the impact on global recovery. His speech drew attention to the international Covax initiative which aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and ensure fair and equitable access for every country in the world. Under the Covax plan, high-income countries pay to buy vaccines from the facility, and in the process, subsidise the world’s poorer countries by way of lower prices. The collective financing model is designed to provide vaccine manufacturers with volume guarantees for specific vaccine candidates.

There is growing awareness that the longer it takes for all countries to receive the vaccine, the greater the potential for further variants to emerge and so increase the risk that today’s vaccines become ineffective. At an economic level, research from the International Chamber of Commerce estimates that a delay in bringing the pandemic under control in emerging economies would wipe about $4.4tn off the world’s output this year, or about 5.7 per cent of annual global output before the pandemic. Yet the initiative has struggled to gain momentum, with some developed economies signing their own bilateral deals with vaccine manufacturers rather than through the Covax facility.Given the potential for both positive social and economic outcomes, progress on “Covax” is an important litmus test for global appetite for “shared value” outcomes.