There is an African proverb that goes, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” This implies the vulnerability of innocent bystanders to become collateral damage, even pawns, in a tussle between or among powerful forces.

While this is so true, I’d like to think that when elephants fight, the ants should just instead hurry up and go about their business. One can’t help but be a big fan of ants. They’re industrious, they work as a team, and if we’re to recall that fable about ants, they save up for the rainy days (or winter, as per Aesop’s fables).

Now before someone takes me to task for mixing up my literary references, I’d like to remind everybody that I never claimed to be an outstanding student, much less an authority on literature. I am only reminded of it because of recent events rocking the global scene.

Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, you will have heard about the seismic shifts now happening on the other side of the world. We are now living out the years when there are very real tariff wars, when decades-old bonds between countries are being broken, massive budget cuts here and there and the overhaul of systems that govern the dominant military and economic force of the last century. It remains to be seen what the world will look like after everything is said and done, but I don’t think we should just wait around and see.

I say this as I am about to enter the whirlwind that will be the Philippines’ hosting of the ASEAN in 2026. The last time we hosted was in 2017, during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s time and when the ASEAN celebrated its 50th year. May I say that that particular ASEAN event went beautifully. It was such an accomplishment for the Philippines to have successfully staged the event. I daresay it even set the bar higher for the ASEAN countries that hosted the event afterwards.

And now with the excellent work by Indonesia last year, and no doubt by Malaysia this year, we have our work cut out for us in 2026. There is so much at stake here. ASEAN 2026 will be the biggest international event to be hosted by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. It will communicate to the world how ready the Philippines is to be one of the rising economies of Southeast Asia, which itself is a region to watch on the global stage.

As chairman of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (BAC) Philippines, I initiated, as early as last year, our planned legacy projects for the Philippine chairmanship in 2026. When a country is chair of the ASEAN BAC, it initiates projects which are to be sustained even after the end of that country’s chairmanship. In the 2017 chairmanship, for example, we had the ASEAN Mentorship for Entrepreneurs Network (AMEN), which is based on Go Negosyo’s Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME) program, implemented alongside the Department of Trade and Industry. To expand and scale it to a regional level, we translated the modules we use for KMME and built an ASEAN-wide network of mentors. The Japan ASEAN Integration Fund generously funded AMEN, and we have completed its second phase and are moving on to the third phase.

For the 2026 chairmanship, we are focusing on two very important issues: food security and women’s economic empowerment. At Go Negosyo, we have long made these two areas a priority. We expanded KMME to agriculture through the Kapatid Agri Mentor ME Program and successfully parlayed that into Kapatid Angat Lahat sa Agri Program, which we scaled regionally to ASEAN Food Security Alliance.

For our Filipinas, it’s been 17 years since we started focusing on women entrepreneurs through the Go Negosyo Filipina Entrepreneurs Summit, now known as the Women Summit. For the coming ASEAN 2026, we plan to push women entrepreneurship higher on the regional agenda. We have made so much progress on women’s rights, so now we will work on women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship. I am sure we will have plenty of help identifying the issues that need to be addressed, thanks to the very active women’s business community here in the Philippines.

Signs seem to be pointing to our readiness to tackle these two issues. In the latest Labor Force Survey, it was shown that the labor force participation of women has seen a significant increase, rising year-on-year from 49.3 percent in 2024 to 52.9 percent in 2025. Not only is this a step in the right direction, it also validates what we’ve already known: women are an economic force to reckon with. That they’re now finding more employment means we’re breaking down more barriers in gender equality and women empowerment.

According to the same Labor Force Survey, we’re also seeing that one of the sectors experiencing more employment is agriculture. Climate change is making the issue of food security even more urgent, so I am heartened to see that the sector has enough capacity to generate increased employment. My hope is that agriculture is becoming more attractive to young people and defying beliefs that the younger generation of farmers are opting for office jobs. Maybe there is a new generation that is attracted to farming because of its bucolic appeal? Or that one can be a tech-savvy farmer and make a decent profit from agriculture?

Whatever the reason, we should ride this wave and scale it so that the Philippines can become an agricultural powerhouse in the region. Same with women’s economic empowerment; women are an untapped force, especially when they become entrepreneurs.

Let’s stay focused, be like ants and get to work.

Originally Published in Philippine Star