The big picture in sustainability

I had a chance to speak at the 4th annual Sustainable Inclusive Business Conference held at the United States International University (USIU) two weeks ago.

My presentation was on the role organisations can play to promote a sustainable greener Kenya inspired by the reforestation campaign by NIC Bank dubbed “Change The Story.”

Interacting with champions from different sectors during the conference inspired me to critically think about how African and specifically Kenyan businesses are implementing sustainability into their business practice.

I did a quick survey of the top five listed companies in Kenya to understand how sustainability is entrenched into the respective organisations. To my surprise, only one of the top five companies had integrated sustainable development goals (SDGs) into its corporate strategy.

I went a step further to review the core values of the specific organisations to understand how legacy and longevity of social responsibility is embedded into their internal corporate culture, and how they conduct business. Again, only one listed company has integrated legacy and sustainability as part of its core values.

This led me to conclude that social responsibility has continued to be a buzzword and a publicity tool with no sustainability pillars, and this needs to change.

Globally, more organisations are building sustainability strategies that translate into the way they do business. The overall impact of this goes beyond a shift in the day to day business practice and guarantees that impact in the society is root-cause driven and sustainable.

This also drives long lasting partnerships with like-minded stakeholders, allowing them to be involved in decision making and support the company’s purpose and vision.

This drives greater impact with the ultimate goal of ensuring that the community is an active partner in helping shape the benefits companies bring to society. We are seeing organisations and governments embracing the concept of “shared value”.

Shared value has the potential of turning the fortunes of a company and that of the people for better. A good example of this is Yara, a global fertiliser company that has operations in Tanzania. Yara was being faced with various set-backs in reaching smallholder farmers in parts of the country from the main port of entry in Dar es Salaam.

Challenges included poor roads, corruption that lead to fertilizer being held at the port for long periods and poor policy framework to support access to affordable fertiliser by the farmers. The consequence of this was poor yields and crop failure, which ultimately contributed to acute food shortage that led to poverty and poor nutrition.

During the 2010 World Economic Forum Africa Summit, Yara started an initiative that brought together various organisations that included corporates, civil society groups, international aid agencies and the Tanzanian government.

The partnership was known as the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT). Its main goal was to build an agricultural corridor at a cost of $3.4 billion from the port in Dar es Salaam to the Western part of the East African country.

Within three years, the corridor had transformed the whole agricultural value chain in Tanzania.

Through modern infrastructure that included a fertiliser terminal at the port, roads, rail, and electricity; properly managed farmer co-operatives; bringing in agro-dealers and financial services providers; and supporting agro-processing facilities and transport services, the incomes of hundreds of thousands of small-holder farmers have been boosted significantly.

Shared value is looking at the big picture with a sustained root-cause driven solution that seeks to see all stakeholders win. It is looking at how best we can deliver positive change in the society by seeking solutions that will create long-term value for business.

It goes beyond financial donations towards projects or institutions, it must be embedded in the way we do business. The approach must be value chain driven, and translate into business practices that promote a new way of doing things, and thus translating this into the corporate culture of the organisation.