Shell Companies in Nigeria (SCiN) has won two trophies at the 10th Sustainability, Enterprise and Responsibility Awards (SERAs) in Lagos.
Known as the Corporate Social Responsibility Awards, SERAs instituted the awards to celebrate companies that have impacted positively in their environments.
At this edition, Shell Nigeria’s kinetic pitch won in the Innovation Award category, beating seven other nominees. It also won the Best Company in the Climate Action category, beating five other competitors.
Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company’s (SNEPCo’s) General Manager, Deepwater Production, Effy Okon, led its team which comprised General Manager, External Relations, Igo Weli; External Relations Communications Manager Sola Abulu; Head, Business Relations, Alan Udi; and Social Performance Discipline Adviser Hope Nuka, to receive the awards.
Twenty-six awards were won by corporate organisations and individuals in recognition of their sustainable development and social investment efforts in Africa, including the President of Botswana, Ian Khama.
Country Chair, Shell Companies in Nigeria and Managing Director of The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC), Osagie Okunbor, said: “We are pleased at the recognition of our contributions to the development of Nigeria. Corporate Social Responsibility is an idea, which Shell has given priority, and the company is working to improve its partnership with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments and communities to deliver on its promise of developing human and material resources.”
Saibatu Mansaray, Founder at The Mansaray Foundation (Source: The Mansaray Foundation)
In September 1997, I lost my aunt. In May 2008, I lost another aunt.
My Aunt, a proud Sierra Leone native, and mother of four, was delivering twins when she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage that not only took her life but also the life of one of her twins. This was in 1997, when my aunt and her baby were lost forever. Her five surviving beautiful children were forced to grow up without their mother. After 23 years, this loss still feels like it was only yesterday and for many more families in my home country, it very well could have been yesterday, or even today.
My family was again forced to endure the aftermath of this crisis in 2008, when a second aunt died from childbirth complications. She, too, went to deliver my beautiful cousin and succumbed to postpartum hemorrhage. Three more cousins of mine were now without their mother: left to navigate life without her loving guidance.
Sierra Leone is an amazing place with incredible people where losses like this have sadly become commonplace. My people, as foreign as it may seem to the outside world, fear childbirth.
When both of my aunts died, my uncles never remarried. They both raised my cousins without a wife, but they were never alone. Our family and the local community rallied to help. The sacrifice, resilience, and the sense of community that Sierra Leonean – and Africans as a whole – have for one another should warrant everyone’s admiration. But they need more, they need all of us to fight with them to affect change and save lives.
Ninety-four percent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries like Sierra Leone with 830 women dying every day, and an estimated 300,000 deaths annually around the world from preventable causes. My aunts were two of these women.
They are both just statistics now, but to me, their husbands, and their surviving children they are so much more. While I do not know each of these 830 women who die each day, I know they have families. They have children who love them dearly and will forever miss and long for their mothers.
The maternal deaths are staggering worldwide, but unfortunately most of Africa is far more impacted than the rest of the world.
Women in Africa have, on average, many more pregnancies than women in developed countries, and their lifetime risk of death is higher. Due to African women bearing children at an early age, their lifetime risk of maternal death is extremely high and equates to the probability that a 15 year old girl will eventually die from a maternal cause. In high income countries, this is 1 in 5,400, versus 1 in 45 in low-income countries.
Young adolescents face a higher risk of complications and death as a result of pregnancy than other women. In Sierra Leone, if we do nothing to change our unfortunate circumstances, 6% of our 15-year-old girls will die from maternal causes sometime in the future. Maternal deaths are common in rural and poorer communities and as it stands today, 1 in 75 births in Sierra Leone results in the death of a woman.
The five countries where a woman is most likely to die in a given pregnancy are Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, and South Sudan. As a continent, countries like Egypt, Morocco, and Libya have demonstrated that we can lower the maternal death rates. Our beloved Mother Africa is suffering most from a health crisis that is preventable and we must all band together in order to solve this rather unfortunate inordinate number of African maternal deaths.
The Mansaray Foundation begins its work in Sierra Leone, but we envision our work spreading throughout West Africa where we are among the highest maternal mortality rates worldwide. Sierra Leone has the highest maternal mortality rates in the world but the maternal deaths in Liberia, Guinea, Gambia and Nigeria are unsettling.
The main factors that prevent women from receiving or seeking care during pregnancy and childbirth are poverty, distance to facilities, lack of information, as well as inadequate and poor quality of care.
In Sierra Leone, the foundation will focus its efforts on improving access to quality care and ensuring the rural clinics are properly resourced.
We will utilize a simple, scalable and sustainable health-systemic approach to prevent maternal mortality, promote maternal health, and prolong the quality of life of rural women in Sierra Leone through multi-stakeholder partnerships that is in line with global best practices.
Our goal is to help lead Sierra Leone from the highest maternal mortality rate globally, to the lowest five in Africa.
I look forward to returning to Sierra Leone and embarking upon a journey to address and combat Sierra Leone’s maternal mortality crisis, work tirelessly on youth and women’s empowerment efforts and strongly support local innovative and development opportunities for Mother Africa.
Our efforts must begin here, by sharing the stories of those we have lost. If you have a loss to share or would like to join the #fightforourmothers, reachout on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn: @TheMansarayFdn.
We call on the pioneers, the innovators, and the educators, the global health leaders, big tech, journalists and supply chain experts to join us in this fight. Mother Africa needs you, join us:
Author: Saibatu Mansaray is the President and Founder of The Mansaray Foundation and Host of The Saibatu Mansaray Journey podcast. Mansaray’s life and career has been dedicated to public service seeking to effect positive change in the world and making her home country and the people of Sierra Leone proud. She works now to highlight the community and speak out on the issues and challenges we in the African community face. The Mansaray Foundation initiative is the latest step in the long line of public service by Sierra Leone-native Saibatu Mansaray, a retired United States Army officer after 23-years of service and two tours of duty to Iraq.
Mansaray served as a White House Physician Assistant and Tactical Medical Officer to President Obama and Vice President Biden followed by Director of Medical Operations and Military Aide to two Vice Presidents. Upon retiring, Mansaray joined Vice President Pence’s team as his Director of Advance. Her final assignment was as a White House senior executive and Assistant Director for Public Health at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Wildu du Plessis, Head of Africa, Baker McKenzie (Image source: Baker McKenzie)
The industrials, manufacturing and transport (IMT) sector is being hit hard by COVID-19 disruption, but commitment to sustainability could very well lead the sector to recovery. This is according to Baker McKenzie’s report “Sustainable Success: Exploring environmental, social and governance priorities for industrials through COVID-19 and beyond” which revealed that industrialshave taken great leaps forward in relation to environmental, social and governance matters (ESG) in the past decade. The report outlines how CEOs in the sector have signed up to a new holistic definition of company purpose and most public companies now report on ESG goals. Access to funding is also becoming intricately linked to a commitment to ESG principles, with industrials looking at sustainability initiatives as a way to source capital for projects in Africa.
According to the report, the economic challenges and the huge changes that have turned the world upside down in 2020 cannot be ignored, but the fundamental imperative to embed and prioritise ESG remains — and is arguably more important than ever as the fragility of the world’s current systems and norms is revealed.
The report found that sustainability can be used as a lever of recovery and competitive advantage, where companies proactively consider ESG issues as part of their COVID-19 response and decision-making. Connecting sustainability and business models more closely offers industrials the opportunity to reimagine supply chains, production and revenue streams — the basis for long-term reinvention and success. As such, sustainability is set to be a powerful guiding principle of COVID-19 recovery and a source of advantage for IMT companies. In the fight for post-pandemic capital in Africa, embracing sustainability provides a valuable edge for African industrials. Funding in some areas is already contingent on meeting certain global ESG standards and other investors have followed this lead — requiring documented, planned policies and processes in relation to ESG before investing
Access to capital will be critical to corporate recovery and in ensuring that key industrial and infrastructure projects in Africa can continue. Africa’s leaders have been assessing how best to mobilise capital from local savings pools, shore up development finance from various development finance institutions like the International Finance Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, and direct capital raised via green bonds towards qualifying projects.
The market for green and sustainable bonds is set to expand further in the coming years and industrials in Africa are likely beneficiaries of the capital raised. The African Development Bank (AfDB) Green Bond programme, for example, facilitates the bank’s green growth policy by providing capital for eligible climate change projects. Investors are able to finance climate change initiatives via green bonds, which is then allocated to eligible projects.
Green bonds are gaining in popularity across Africa and the larger economies of sub-Saharan Africa have all embraced this. In 2019, Kenya set up the legal framework and rules for the launch of its first green bond on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, with the aim of raising capital for green transport, water and energy infrastructure projects in the country. The country announced in 2020 that it planned to issue its first diaspora bond for green infrastructure projects this year, so that Kenyans living abroad could be given the opportunity to participate in the country’s post pandemic recovery via investments in sustainable projects.
Nigeria was the first African country to issue a Sovereign Green Bonds in 2017 and launched its the Green Bond Market Development Programme a year later. The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Green Bond Market is a platform for green bonds in the country and four bonds are listed on the platform. Late last year, the NSE signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Luxembourg Stock Exchange to promote cross-listing and trading of green bonds in Nigeria and Luxembourg, with Access Bank’s Green Bond the first to be listed on both exchanges.
In South Africa, in an effort to drive investment and make it easier to list and trade sustainability-linked instruments, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) launched a sustainability segment for green bonds in June this year. In July 2020, the African Development Bank invested ZAR 2 billion in Africa’s first Sustainable Development Goals-linked bonds (SDG bonds), which were issued by Nedbank and listed on the newly launched green bonds segment of JSE. This bond issuance is expected to create jobs, promote SMEs run by members of under-represented groups in the country, and act as a catalyst for green projects.
Post pandemic, IMT initiatives in Africa are expected to have a heightened focus on improving Africa’s capacity for green, low-carbon and sustainable development, via, for example, clean energy, community healthcare, green transport, sustainable water, wildlife protection and low-carbon development projects. Wildu du Plessisbelieves a commitment to ESG principles is clearly taking centre stage in the quest for post pandemic funding, with access to capital for large industrial projects now likely to contain sustainability requirements.
Article by: Wildu du Plessis, Head of Africa, Baker McKenzie
The elimination of gender inequality and achievement of the United Nations SDG 5 on gender equality remains a pressing objective as the global community barrels towards 2030. In this interview, Alaba Ayinuola of Business Africa Online spoke with the Founder of Dream Girl Global (DGG), Precious Oladokun about DGG’s work, gender inequality, and Covid-19. Excerpts.
Alaba: Could you briefly tell us about Dream Girl Global and the gap its filing?
Precious: Dream Girl Global is a non-profit organization that was set up to contribute towards the elimination of gender inequality, and empower young women as a contribution to the 5th Sustainable Development Goal. Specifically, we carry this out through mentorship projects in a bid to empower young girls, encourage them to dream bigger, and help give them excellent head starts at their careers. We are currently in operation in Nigeria and India.
Alaba: What sparked the interest and how are you funding this initiative?
Precious: I have always had a deep rooted passion for gender inequality partly as a result of my experiences as a female in Nigeria, and partly because of the experiences of many other women across the world. Many countries that are poor today have cultural norms that exacerbate favoritism towards males. Norms such as patriarchy and concern for women’s purity help explain the male skewed ratio in India and China, and low female employment in the Middle East, and North Africa. Also, issues like uneven access to education, lack of employment equality, job segregation, and lack of political representation are major reasons behind this initiative.
So far, we have not needed much funding to carry out our projects. However, when there is a need to, we are going to reach out to individuals and organizations with similar interests to help pursue this cause.
Alaba: How does your organization measure its impact?
Precious: Basically, we measure our impact by setting short terms goals, and once a goal is achieved, we mark it out. This gives a clear picture of our activities and generally helps to measure our impact.
Alaba: Kindly share some of your challenges and successes since you launched?
Precious: One major challenge is the refusal of some people to understand the concept of gender equality, resulting in criticism of the cause. Also, the management of data and information is another challenge (yet in a good way). I would rather prefer to refer it as a learning process.
So far, I have been thrilled by the successes that we have recorded. We have been able to reach out to a large number of people through our social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. This has provided an opportunity for us to educate the masses on the importance of gender equality.
Also, we successfully mentored twenty (20) girls in Nigeria and India during our Pilot Mentorship Project that ended a month ago. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 8% of girls finish secondary school. Imagine what could be achieved if we could start to close this gap and educate more girls.
Alaba: What do you think are the key challenges regarding gender-related issues, both in the workplace and in the home? How might they be overcome?
Precious: In my opinion, the major key challenge is that people do not understand, or more preferably, have chosen not to understand the plight of women. This is particularly prevalent in rural communities. In most societies, there is an inherent belief that men are simply better equipped to handle the best paying jobs. This inequality results in lower income for women, and is one reason why women hardly get recognized among the most financially prosperous persons in the world.
Another challenge is that many men enjoy the dividends of patriarchy, and would prefer to continue to enjoy those. These may be overcome with more sensitization, empowerment of women, and with taking a stand (among other things). By the latter, I mean that people should by their actions and words support gender equality, and call out misogynistic practices.
Alaba: As a social entrepreneur, how has the pandemic affected your work and the organization? How are you prepared post Covid-19?
Precious: Well, the pandemic has not really affected our work per se. Most of what we do involves communication via social media platforms. However, the outbreak of the virus has disrupted our plans to visit secondary schools, low income communities, and households. It is our intention to fully take up these after the pandemic, and we are working earnestly to see that it becomes a reality.
Alaba: What are your three-work-from home tips for founders who are managing a remote team now for the first time?
Precious: Tip no 1: Take full advantage of the internet. The internet is an avenue to explore various opportunities.
Tip no 2: For a founder who is managing a remote team for the first time, you will need to have dedicated, reliable, and self-driven members. You will need people who understand the cause, and are willing to go any length in ensuring that the goals of the organization are achieved.
Tips 3: My last tip is patience. This is a virtue ignored by so many people. Start building, and be dedicated while building. It takes a little patience and it takes a lot of faith but it’s worth the wait.
Alaba: As a young female leader, what drives you?
Precious: I am driven by the possibilities of results, and I am confident that whatever I put my mind to do, I can achieve it. To me, there is no impossibility.
Alaba: What message would you give to younger men and women?
Precious: My message to younger men and women is simple. Build things, watch them grow, and never rush. The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. Another message I feel necessary is the need for younger men and women to develop and build good relationships with people. It will help one go far in life.
Alaba: How do you relax, and what is your favorite tourist destination in Africa?
Precious: I relax by watching movies, swimming, and going to nice restaurants. Regarding my favorite tourist destination in Africa, I would go with Ghana. I have been to a couple of places in Africa, but I find Ghana very interesting because of the people, the culture, and generally everything. But to be honest, there is no place like home. East or West, home is the best- Nigeria.
Precious Oladokun is the Founder of Dream Girl Global; a non profit organization that seeks to empower young girls as a contribution to the fifth sustainable development goal and is currently in operation in Nigeria and India. She also sits on the international board of Uriji, London, a social media company that helps to record dreams for as many years imaginable and help users earn while promoting their passion. She is the youngest and first Nigerian on this Board.
Precious is currently pursuing a career in Law, and is currently a Bar Candidate at the Lagos Campus of the Nigerian Law School. Prior to this, she interned at notable law firms across the Country including Olaniwun Ajayi LP, Templars, Banwo & Ighodalo, and Aluko & Oyebode. She has also served as an external support personnel at global Law Firm, White & Case.
In her spare time, she loves to watch movies, swim, travel, learn French, and taste exquisite dishes.
