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IN AFRICA, IT IS NO LONGER BUSINESS AS USUAL – It is about doing business with heart

July 1, 2010 By 3 Comments

With Africa Gathering London this weekend, I wanted to share with you some thoughts on development in Southern Africa from Charlene Hewat CEO of Environment Africa. Environment Africa is a 100% African owned and operated NGO operating in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. I am truly humbled by the work they have done over the last 20 years.

IT IS NO LONGER BUSINESS AS USUAL -  It is about doing business with heart. By Charlene Hewat, CEO, Environment Africa

Our world, our planet is changing and the time has come for Zimbabwe thinkers and policy makers to think of new innovative, environmentally and sustainable ways of doing business, business is no longer based on ‘business as usual’.

When  public systems breakdown,  governments often look to the private sector to save the day.  In many developing countries such as India, a range of services that were in the public domain – housing, water, energy, transportation and communication have been or are being privatized.  This may lead to greater efficiency, but even the most die-hard neo-classical economist understands that it can also spell environmental and social disasters.

Public-private partnerships are a good way to divide responsibilities among different sectors of society. But they are fraught with danger, since they can become another way for the private sector to internalize benefits and externalize costs.

If we are to reorient the economy’s path to sustainability, what we really need is a totally new sector, perhaps termed the Community Sector,  which would combine public sector objectives with private sector strategies.   We need to create businesses that have a heart.  Environment Africa (EAfrica), a truly African non-for-profit, private voluntary organisation (PVO) has developed a concept called (PPCP) meaning Public, Private, and Community Partnerships.  EAfrica believes that this is future for businesses in Africa and that this approach, PPCP, would contribute not only toward sustainable development but also to poverty alleviation.

PPCP is not about an NGO, private sector, public sector coalition or a once off partnership, it is about corporate social responsibility and sustainable development in practice.  EAfrica, through it’s not-for-profit company, is seeking to become a social, environmental investor in companies and take out a shareholding which it will hold in trust for communities and social and environmental development projects.  The not-for-profit company, is looking at an alternative to the typical donor route of one off grants and handouts and aims, through the PPCP approach to uplift the livelihoods of communities in a sustainable business like manner.   The PPCP concept has now been included in the Medium Term Plan for Zimbabwe as well as the Zambezi Transfronter National Parks document.  EAfrica is also in the process of establishing a PPCP Forum and if you are interested in assisting in any way, please do not hesitate to contact EAfrica’s CEO, Charlene Hewat:  charlie@eafrica.utande.co.zw

What is Corporate Social Responsibility then?

The International Standards Body ISO, are developing a Social Responsibility guideline called ISO26000.  This is a guide for all types of organisations to follow.  The Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) is the ISO representatives here in Zimbabwe and has an ISO26000 working group, which organisations have been participating in.  Environment Africa has played a key role in the development of this standard not only in Zimbabwe but Internationally, under the banner of SAZ and as an NGO representative from a developing country.   EAfrica is also working closely with the Business Council For Sustainable Development Zimbabwe (BCSDZ), on CSR.  The ISO26000 Standard Guidance document is due to be released this year.

Social responsibility has continued to become a topical issue for all sectors, the private, the public and the government sectors as it is considered one of the key drivers to sustainable development. Social responsibility despite the name is not inclined to social development alone; it spans the operations of organizations internally all the way to the community or consumer level. Being socially responsible is considered a sustainable way of doing business and most often it boils down to trust. How can the various sectors trust each other? Can business trust communities? and can communities trust business to address their concerns in a manner that is beneficial for both. When looking at the corporate sector, it is important to examine the extent to which they are integrating social and environmental concerns throughout their business.

Some of the social concerns currently being experienced in Zimbabwe, as is the case in developing countries, include poverty, HIV/ AIDS; gender inequality; limited access to health, sanitation and education facilities and food security.  Its is evident that the developing countries have serious social concerns in comparison to the developed world and the question in the developing countries is how to include these concerns within the business frame work and still make a profit at the end of the day.

Internationally Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is being mainstreamed by many corporates and is now considered the key component to long-term survival. There are several companies now in Zimbabwe who have adopted CSR and have partnered with Environment Africa to implement some of the 7 core areas of SR.  Some of the activities include:

  • Development and implementation of a CSR Policy
    Looking at a companies carbon footprint and offsetting carbon emissions
    Partnerships on CSR projects and programmes

    CSR is more than just business, it is a part of your business and remember, it is not philanthropy or cheque book PR, it is about commitment, involvement and action. Get involved today and help rebuild our beautiful country Zimbabwe.

    Filed Under: Africa, Guest Posts, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

    Africa: Doing Her Bit for Haiti

    January 17, 2010 By 2 Comments

    It is fun going to conferences and events that focus on subjects that are important to you. Once such event for me has been Africa Gathering. It not only focuses on the continent of my birth, but also how technology and social media can help with creating sustainable development. Two of my favourite subjects.

    People most often view Africa as the recipient of aid, the poor cousin who needs technical assistance. Events like Africa Gathering are important as they show the world Africa is full of capable people who can, and do create systems, technology and processes that not only work for Africa, but have global significance and application.

    The most visible of these projects right now is Ushahidi and their vital efforts in crowdsourcing data coming out of the Haiti earthquake and translating it into useful, available and actionable information.

    Ushahidi was initially developed by Kenyans to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post election disturbances in 2008.  Since then the platform has been rebuilt primarily by people within Africa, but in true open source philosophy with contributions from people in Europe and the US.

    Take a look at their website and read further, it makes interesting reading.

    Here is the link to their Haiti specific site.

    As a Zimbabwean, it delights me to be able to point to the hard work, dedication, and resourcefulness of some very smart African people, who have developed a platform that has global application and the ability to ultimately save lives.

    From an organizational perspective, this raises a few important questions and points

    • Who said social media tools do not have real purpose and application?
    • How can organizations learn from this?
    • Why aren’t more people thinking about how they can organize information from the collective and turn it into useable and valuable data?
    • Why must the revenue model of social media concentrate on making money directly from the tools verse figuring out how the tools and their application can empower your organization to reach objectives or gain revenue?

    Let’s all learn a little from the people of Africa

    Filed Under: Africa, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

    What can Africa teach the World about Technology?

    April 26, 2009 By 8 Comments

    321px-terrestrial_globesvgAuthor: Alasdair Munn

    tcg: The Communication Group

    After attending Africa Gathering this weekend, the central key words and phrases I gained were:

    • Relevance
    • Solution based approach
    • Context
    • Understanding your stakeholders.
    • Sustainable (All four cornerstones)

    In the West, particularly the US, the most publicised and most visible business model for the development of collaborative and people-connecting technologies have been the social network models.

    There is a perception (right or wrong) that the model to replicate is the one that is built on ‘the great idea that takes off’.

    • Have a great idea
    • Obtain funding
    • Build it using smart technology
    • Gain user buy in and critical mass
    • Figure out the business models later
    • New, unexpected business models will appear as you go along.

    What these models have proved to us is that there is power in connecting people, in collaboration and allowing people to add value and perspectives. Some amazing technologies have resulted from this and new ways of looking at how we can use these tools have been unexpected by products. There is no denying that these have changed the way we do things, and have a huge capacity to ensure the way we do business changes for the better.

    These models came about in a time of comparative wealth and excess. As resources become increasingly scarce, people are looking towards business models based upon relevance and context.

    It has always been the case within Africa that development resources have been scarce. One thing the people of Africa understand is how to make the most of their limited resources. AfriGadget, a blog that explores the way in which the people of Africa solve everyday problems with ingenuity illustrates this very well.

    In the West there is a tendency to try and replicated what is out there. There is a preoccupation on talking about the various ways in which existing platforms or networks can be best “leveraged”. Hands up those who have not written or read numerous blogs on how to get the most out of twitter?

    Technology solutions coming out of Africa are built with purpose, against objectives and within the boundaries of their resources. It is a solutions based approach. It is also a stripped down approach where only the relevant resources and tools are used. Simple works because less can go wrong and if it does go wrong, simple is easier to fix. There is a shift in the way tools and technologies are looked at.

    A good example of this is what Ushahidi did in Kenya. Ushahidi is an opensource platform that crowdsources crisis information. They took a widely used and available piece of technology, texting on mobile phones and applied it to a Google Maps mashup. This was built in Kenya using local knowledge and technologists in response to post election violence. This provided a real time map of violence hotspots with an understanding of the types of violence in those areas. The interesting part is they quickly recognised that citizen reporting leads to an overload of incoming information. Using social media tools most people take for granted, or seldom consider outside the context of specific social networks, they are creating a crowdsource filter. Using tools such as rating, both content and people and word, language and phrase filters, for example, sense can be made out of this overload. Considering profiles to have a deeper significance than a means to tell people who you are, real value can be added to content. Check out Erik Hersman’s TED talk here. 

    As the West, and the developed world continue to struggle against scarcity of resources, they can learn from Africa’s approach. Shifting the way resources are looked at and challenging old business models are essential. Context and relevance are no longer just buzz words.

    I have just found these links to blogs on Africa Gathering thanks to Juergen Eichholz

    Filed Under: Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,