On 21^st February 2022, the KEPSA CEO Ms Carole Kariuki participated in the CEOs Roundtable held by UN Global Compact Network Kenya at the Villa Rosa Kempinski. The event, which was hosted by Ms Sanda Ojiambo – CEO & Executive Director of UN Global Compact, sought to unpack the UN Global Compact Africa Strategy and discuss opportunities and support available for businesses in Kenya to deliver social and economic impact at scale through responsible business practices.

Present at the forum was Amb. Johnson Weru – Principal Secretary, State Department for Trade and Enterprise Development; Ms Flora Mutahi – Board Member, UN Global Compact and KEPSA Chairperson; Mr Joseph Ogutu – Chief Special Projects Officer, Safaricom PLC; Mr Mark Kaigwa – Founder & CEO, Nendo Limited among other business leaders and Executives.

In her opening remarks, Ms Mutahi noted that Businesses in Africa must become strong pillars of sustainability while adding that the Sustainable Development Goals are perfectly aligned with Africa’s priorities. She pointed out that financial institution records big profits and that they should take up the challenge to support the sustainability agenda. She went on to laud organisations that have taken up the Sustainability agenda in their supply chains.

The UN Global Compact Africa Strategy is anchored on the Global Compact’s ambition to accelerate corporate sustainable and responsible business practices on the Continent and champion the business sector’s contributions to sustainable development. The growth agenda of the Global Compact in Africa is ambitious, deliberate and geared towards ensuring that companies affiliated with the Global Compact are enthusiastic drivers of the corporate sustainability and responsible business practices movement.

In her Keynote address, Ms Ojiambo noted that for Africa to realize the vision of prosperous, thriving and advanced future, businesses in Africa must embrace and become strong pillars of sustainability and responsible business practices. “Let’s see how we can shift business operations, processes and strategies and in so doing, we shall ultimately impact more on the developmental goals,” She stated.

While officiating the launch of the strategy, Amb. Weru noted that the Ministry of Trade and Industrialization has a mandate to create a competitive and sustainable private sector by ensuring an enabling policy and regulatory environment and also working with other agencies ensuring that the requisite infrastructure is in place to facilitate business. He added that the ministry has embarked on a post-Covid-19 transition with full recognition that sustainable long-term recovery will hinge on innovative measures for business and industry. “We have to go beyond traditional means for economic recovery,” He added.

Among the issues that came out of the plenary session included:

• A sustainable society cannot be achieved without collaboration, therefore, there is a need of partnerships between the private and public players
• There’s great a need for financial institutions to be keener on financing sustainable solutions to make an impact on the sustainability agenda
• SMEs make up the bulk of businesses and therefore it’s important to ensure that SMEs are supported financially at an affordable cost and put in place civilized ways of dealing with loan repayment
• There’s a need for communication sharing, especially in opportunities
• Unchecked global environmental emergencies such as climate change, could cause social and economic damages far greater than that which has been caused by COVID-19