On 27 June 2018, I made a presentation in the session on What role for the private sector in challenging global inequality? at the 2018 Annual Conference of the Development Studies Association, held at the University of Manchester, UK. The session was organised by the Business & Development Study Group. It was based on the premise that reducing inequality is a Sustainable Development Goal that the private sector should help realise (along with the other SDGs). What does the evidence around public-private partnerships thus far suggest about the role of private sector involvement in addressing inequality within and between nations?

My presentation used critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 2012) to consider discourses of the private sector in the key documents of the MDGs and the SDGs in order to examine the extent to which the international discourse has evolved in the 2000-2015 period. Other presentations in this session were concerned with:

• Sustainable development and the mining industry in Ghana, Peru and Zambia (Tomas Frederiksen)
• The creation of shared values and promoting traditional organic crop varieties
  in remote rural areas, India (Rohan Katepallewar)
• The construction sector in Accra, Ghana (Serena Masino)
• Flash blending development finance (Marc Cohen)
• DFID and the UK private sector in Africa: a case review of opportunities and
  conflicting interests (Jo-Anna Russon)
• New public-private partnerships in Brazil which are challenging local inequalities through the market (Jessica Sklair).