I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Perhaps the highlight was seeing and hearing 19-year-old Nigerian-American poet Salome Agbaroji read her poem, HOPE.
Seeing was without doubt part of the experience, as she stood at the mic and recited from memory the poem she had written especially for the event. But I hope you agree the words are powerful, just sitting there on the printed page.
The event was a “Be Hope” dinner at Goals House to debate the badly off-track sustainable development goals. Donald Trump’s return means the challenge of getting them on track just got harder.
Salome, last year’s US national youth poet laureate, was telling the gathered world leaders, politicians, business people, charities and campaigners not to give up, not to be overwhelmed, but to be compelled by the scale of the challenge to do what they can to meet it. To see hope as the hero in history’s great battles. “We aren’t crossing our fingers, we’re crossing finish lines.” Love it.
Some very important and in some cases global household names had made some very powerful speeches. But in terms of moving, inspiring, and both giving hope and showing the power of hope, none of them got near to Salome.
As you read it, imagine a young black woman in a white halterneck jumpsuit, her back straight, her voice strong, her eyes shining, the words delivered with such clarity and passion that all table chatter stopped, with a lyrical style that had me longing for the words to be set to music, and at the end an audience of the great and the good realising that sometimes real goodness, real greatness, comes in the power of the written and spoken word, delivered from the heart. It is not often you see the reading of a poem get a standing ovation.
“Be Hope.” I like it. Being hopeful is passive. Be Hope is active. Do stuff. Don’t get drowned by the noise, even when right now one man and a super-rich tech bro sidekick have the loudest megaphone in history.
HOPE
by Salome Agbaroji
When I was ye high,
My hopes were way higher.
Inspired by the fairytales
And princess dress attire.
If you just believe, they said,
Everything bleak becomes beautiful,
The pebbles become pearls and
We all get our happy endings.
But when I outgrew those glass slippers,
I saw no hope on our screens,
In the children’s screams.
As the story unfolds more smoke unfurls and
All of a sudden I’m that child again
Tugging at the pant leg of History
Asking, “is there more to the story
Or is happily ever after only a thing of fiction?”
But then I remember
The hero’s journey is long and hard
And always only won in the final act.
And the valiant protagonist of this epic called “Earth”
Is named HOPE.
But this HOPE isn’t the idle optimist
That sits on stumps plucking petals.
Instead, we are getting our hands dirty
And planting the seeds ourselves.
This HOPE isn’t wishing on a lucky star.
It is imagining a future where stars are visible in the first place
Past the clouds of CO2 we struggle seeing through.
In this story,
Women across the globe are their own knights in shining armour,
or presidents or bankers, or mothers or farmers.
HOPE is a call to the unseen
And a claim to what’s yet to be.
HOPE is the hero we need.
I’m not concerned
With whether you call it a glass half full or a glass half empty.
This HOPE is ensuring there is clean water in that glass
Today, tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that.
We are not kissing lucky quarters
And throwing them into wishing wells.
We are convening in common quarters
To protect and preserve health and wellness.
This is the difference between a wish and a goal.
We do not seek magic potions or genies in bottles,
We exercise our devotion with potential at full throttle.
With 5 years left,
Marvel at the mountains we scaled,
The dragons we’ve slain,
Remember that the sweetest victories
Are the ones with the buzzer-beater turnarounds,
When the hero
On the lowest bars of health
Falls face-to-face with certain defeat,
But with faith, rises to their feet
And fights on.
HOPE is not the way that we cope,
But the way that we conquer.
So this year and beyond,
We aren’t crossing our fingers,
We’re crossing finish lines.
Let’s write a finale worthy of applause
Because every life on this planet
Has its own narrative
Worthy and deserving
Of its own happily ever after.
I went to Davos, dear reader, so that you didn’t have to. I thereby saved you a lot of money.
It is not cheap to get there, to be there, to get around, to attend. Thankfully, Barclays Bank believed my views on the state of the world were interesting enough for me not to have to worry about that, but when I heard what others were paying for the pleasure of being thought to be part of the global elite, and take part in debates on every aspect of economic activity imaginable, I was shocked.
Yet one question that hung in the air was whether they remain the global elite. Davos, and the World Economic Forum, are by-words for economic and political orders that were being comprehensively uprooted by a man who wasn’t there, but whose name was mentioned more than any other in the private conversations and public debates, and whose video address was the most watched and most news-making event of the entire week.
Just how he likes it in a world he believes is as much about who can best grab attention as it is about who has the best ideas to take the world forward.
No prizes for guessing who I am talking about. Donald Trump didn’t come, but dominated Davos from start to finish. Danes were shell-shocked that he seemed to be serious about getting hold of Greenland. When he repeated his call for Canada to become part of the US, there were literally gasps among an audience who have thus far assumed it was just typical Trump braggadocio, not to be taken seriously. Suddenly they were taking it seriously, as they were with the threats on trade, tariffs, the Panama Canal and the rest.
This was all so different to eight years ago. Do any of you remember the big story on the first full day of Trump’s first term on January 20, 2017? I’ll remind you. A huge and petty row based on his claim that more people attended his inauguration than Barack Obama’s, an early introduction to the “alternative facts” that are now firmly embedded in Trump’s populist, polarising, post-truth approach.
This time, there were dozens of far more serious policy announcements and talking points covering a wide range of themes and subjects at home and abroad. A US journalist covering Davos complained: “These are going to be the most exhausting four years of my life.”
Not long after Trump was elected in 2016, I was doing an interview with former vice-president Al Gore, and asked him how on earth he and his fellow climate crisis campaigners were going to deal with a climate denialist in the White House.
“We will just have to work around him,” he smiled.
To a large extent, that happened. Just half a decade ago, the star of the Davos show was Greta Thunberg. World leaders, including our current king, found time to see her.
It is still the case that climate campaigners will have to work around him, and the business case for climate action was still being widely made. But the dial on the issue has shifted, it is Trump who is shifting it, and it will not be easy to shift it back.
However… a good example of the “working around him” approach came at an event I moderated at Goals House that brings people together to try to keep the world focused on the sustainable development goals. These are the 17 goals which the United Nations has committed to reaching for all of humanity by 2030.
I list the shorthand version here, so you can assess for yourself how likely that is, and how much less likely with Trump back in the White House.
No poverty. Zero hunger. Good health and wellbeing. Quality education. Gender equality.
Clean water and sanitation. Affordable and green energy. Decent work and economic growth. Strong industry, innovation and infrastructure.
Reduced inequalities. Sustainable cities and communities. Responsible consumption and production. Climate action.
Improved life below water. Life on land. Peace, justice and strong institutions. Partnerships for the goals.
Even by the UN’s own reckoning, only 17% of these are on track, while double that number have stalled or regressed. That is not a great place to be, five years from 2030. So as politicians, business leaders, NGOs and campaigners gathered for the event, its slogan “Be Hope” felt a tad optimistic.
Yet by the end, after hearing of the enormous breakthroughs that were taking place, fuelled by science and reform, I did actually feel a lot more confident. Right now, with Trump so dominant in the debates of virtually every country in the world, it is easy to feel that his is the only agenda that counts. It isn’t.
He has more power than anyone who was at our dinner, which included heads of government past and present, and some of the biggest names in global business, including Bill Gates. But that doesn’t mean they – or any of us – are powerless.
There were around a dozen contributions to the debate and as the final speaker sat down, and I thanked everyone for coming, I realised that Trump had not been mentioned once. People had talked not about what they couldn’t do to help the sustainable development goals stay on track, but what they could do, and what they were doing now.
The brutality attached to losing power could not have been starker than when the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, spoke in the main hall. He is not the most exciting of speakers at the best of times, but his speech, delivered to most people through headphones via a German-English interpreter, was even more monotone than usual, and struggled to meet the moment, with most people feeling that Europe should engage in some deep soul-searching about how to compete in the era of Trump 2.0.
As the speech came to an end, there was time for questions. Not a single hand was raised. I have done hundreds of speeches followed by a Q&A, and that has never happened to me.
It felt like an eternity, my stomach was churning on his behalf, and eventually someone asked him a question about his strategy for Africa. I don’t think many in the hall believed he would be there after the February 23 election to deliver it.
I had an idea, which I gave to the shell-shocked Danes. Warn the US that if Trump keeps on with his threats about taking over Greenland, Denmark will stop selling Ozempic to the States. Two-thirds of Ozempic sales are to the US, while the Americans account for 90% of sales of the other Danish anti-obesity drug, Wegovy. Pharma company Novo Nordisk is Europe’s biggest company by market capitalisation, with a value more than $100bn above the entire GDP of Denmark.
Added to which, looking at Trump – who has definitely slimmed down – I wonder whether he might be on them. Former US speaker Kevin McCarthy told me the only way to deal with Trump is by understanding that everything is a negotiation, and he only really respects strength.
Operation Ozempic… the way to get him to give up his intentions on Greenland. Free advice to one of my favourite countries!
