United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urged business leaders to embrace globalization with the aim of spreading prosperity to the less developed nations.

“We have a shared duty to do all we can to shape globalisation so that it spreads prosperity far more broadly among the populations of less developed countries”, Annan recently said in a statement to the 12th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja.

Annan said the globalization of international markets had brought prosperity and wealth to many but noted that a huge proportion of the world’s population had not yet reaped its benefits.

Annan said the business community had a direct stake in helping countries reach the Millennium Development Goals and achieve broad-based sustainable development.

“Through the compact, business can join hands with other sectors to find solutions to the poverty and social injustice that blight our world”, Annan added.