The Global Forum

Cape Town, known as “The Mother City” to South Africans, is an exquisitely beautiful place that is in many ways a model for the new Africa: diverse, entrepreneurial, forward-looking. It is one of the hosts of the World Cup this June and July, when hundreds of millions of soccer fans will be focused on the planet’s most popular sport. At the same time, June 26-28, Cape Town will also be the site of the first-ever FORTUNE/TIME/CNN Global Forum, a three-day event bringing together FORTUNE 500 CEOs, world leaders and members of the TIME 100 for a conference on what we’re calling the New Global Opportunity. This is the idea that global economic power is shifting to the developing world–to Africa and the Middle East, as well as to Asia–and that these markets are more than just frontiers of growth; they are the sources of new ideas and models that can be applied everywhere.

FORTUNE has traditionally been the sole host of the Global Forum, but this year, for the first time, TIME and CNN are principal partners in what will become a regular event. All three organizations will guide and contribute to the discussions as well as cover them online, in print and on air. Topics will range from the future of microfinance to business strategies for emerging markets to breakthroughs in science and health. Michael Elliott, TIME’s international editor, has been steering the content and ideas for the forum from our end. As he says, “We’ve given the conference the title the New Global Opportunity because there’s a realization that we can’t go back to the old ways. Growth has to be inclusive and sustainable. And the role and potential of those who have been marginalized in the past–the poor, especially women and girls–will only grow.”

New roads, stadiums and hotels have been built in Cape Town and other parts of South Africa for the World Cup. “The rainbow nation,” as Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it, has pulled out all the stops to be ready for the big event. I have a long personal connection to South Africa, having written one book about the country, and then, in the 1990s, I had the great privilege of working with Nelson Mandela on his memoirs. I’m looking forward to being in Cape Town for both the Global Forum and the World Cup, which we will cover with a special issue on global soccer. See you in the Mother City.

Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR