Bharti Airtel Africa’s Vice President for Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Michael Okwiri won the CSR Leadership Award at the Africa CSR Leadership Awards in December. He sheds light on their projects
Many people see Corporate Social Responsibility as giving back to the community. Is that the case?
Not completely true. CSR goes beyond philanthropy because it is how an organisation does business responsibly and not just how it treats the communities. For example, CSR for an airline would be to minimise its emissions by using less and cleaner fuel or how it handles the disabled passengers.
CSR is also about how you treat your staff in terms of their health, their families or their work-life balance. It is your social responsibility as an organisation to pay taxes. If you do not do so, then you are slowing the country’s development. It is about following the laid down rules of the country that you are operating in.
CSR also calls for an organisation not to mislead its consumers through irresponsible advertising. Depending on which organisation you work for, CSR is now being called sustainability.
Is CSR sort of a tithe, like Christians would do with their income?
The rule of thumb is that a company gives one per cent of their profits. But this also depends on the financial performance of the organisation. Without being too specific, Airtel invests a significant amount annually in CSR projects across Africa.
You were recently feted for your work in CSR…
It was actually a surprise. I think the team had been monitoring organisations that were doing high-profile CSR activities online. One of our outstanding projects was one we did with the UN about Ebola in Sierra Leone where we used mobile phones to see how the movement of people affects the spread of the disease.
We had also set up a toll-free call centre where people would call to report any suspected cases of Ebola. A doctor would then be sent to the place. We had also set up such call centres in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I do have to say this is the team’s effort and not mine specifically.
What would you single out as one of your most life-changing CSR activities in Kenya?
About four years ago, we set up a mast in some remote part in northern Kenya. Here, the residents, who were mainly pastoralists, would walk close to four hours in order to get access to the market.
What this mast did to them is that they could now just make a phone call to the other side of the market and make enquiries about the livestock market on a given day. This saved the long walk to the market and the cattle dying in some cases along the way. We believe telecommunications really does have the capability to improve and save lives across Africa.
What are some of your biggest wins last year?
Last year, we had over 600 different CSR initiatives within Africa. In Gabon, we are training 5,000 young adults in IT skills, a deal that was signed in November 2014. These are people who have just completed high school and are not able to make it to university. We have been rolling out over the last year.
The Deputy Prime Minister and minister for telecommunications opened up one of the first training centres three months ago. We also take some of the bright students in the programme.
We launched Facebook Zero two years ago here in Kenya and Zambia. Through this platform, our users can browse educational sites and those helping the community. This opens the minds of first-time Internet users, exposing them to more positive content.
This article was taken from here.