A multi-stakeholder approach is needed to accelerate the implementation of social development goals and corporate social investment initiatives in Namibia. The private and public sectors, however, need to collaborate on their CSI initiatives to effect greater impact.
Corporate social investment (CSI) in Namibia is reactive in most instances. As there is no strategy or concerted effort made to combine CSI’s efforts among institutions in the country, making it is difficult to make a long-lasting impact.
The lack of a multi-stakeholder approach to CSI in Namibia needs to be addressed. A CSI national committee, for example, needs to be formulated, where all private and public sector representatives can discuss, manage, and implement their CSI initiatives.
The committee would at a macro level, critically assess the various developmental plans and the SDGs and allocate a goal to a specific industry. For example, the mining sector in Namibia could support CSI initiatives that tackle infrastructure issues in the education sector. The infrastructure issues can, for example, be to the construction of ablution facilities and hostels for schools in remote rural areas.
The banking sector can focus on primary health care, such as building mobile clinics and ensuring they are well equipped, to alleviate the pressure from major hospitals like Katutura Hospital. The committee would monitor the progress and set measurable objects that can be tracked and measured.
So how can CSI initiatives be effectively measured?
Since the UN adopted the Millennium Declaration, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September 2000, there has been an acceleration of poverty reduction, disease control and increased access to schooling and infrastructure, especially in Africa. The MDGs assisted in mobilizing resources from world leaders to directly fight social ills like poverty.
When all the governments agreed to adopt the MDGs in 2000, they had to prove that they have plans and activities to achieve the goals. Namibia integrated the MDGs in both Vision 2030 and NDP3. Namibia diligently reported on the progress and achievements it made in actualising the MDGs goals in its 2008, 2010 and 2015 reports, which can be found online.
Namibia, like other world leaders, was put under immense pressure to report on the progress and/or failure of projects, when they attended summit meetings or the UN General Assembly. Many countries applied a multi-stakeholder approach to tackle the goals.
“The fight against malaria, for example, organised the world’s malariologists to fight malaria”. By virtue of having that MDG, that community of experts dedicated their time to put measures in place to deal with the disease, says Pedro Pereira Leite, in his paper ‘The Proposal for Sustainable Development Goals-II’.
Namibian teachers, for example, need to collaborate with teachers in Estonia, to assist with education challenges in primary and secondary school. Hence, the multi-stakeholder approach with other countries is crucial. However, it is important for these stakeholder networks/committees to have defined goals and smart objectives with clear monitoring and measuring targets.
President JF Kennedy said, “By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it. That’s the essence of the importance of goal setting; helping people to see the goals. And by making them more manageable and less remote. By spelling out how they can be achieved, people can be led to move towards it.”
According to Leite, MDGs’ biggest accomplishments have been in public health. Three out of the eight MDGs are related to health issues. They included reducing child and maternal mortality, and controlling the epidemic and communicable diseases. These goals were achieved, because the goals were clearly defined, and the targets were quantifiable. For example, one of the goals was to reduce under-five mortalities by two-thirds. Those goals could be measured, counted, and assessed, and the outcomes could be compared.
CSI should be interwoven in the ethos and operations of any business. As I conclude, I want to leave you with these questions; what informs your CSI focus areas? How do your CSI’s initiatives align with the SDGs and other developmental plans of the country? How do you monitor and measure long-lasting impact? How do your CSI initiatives align with your corporate strategy?
*Morna Ikosa is a corporate communications and brand reputation strategist, CPRP, MA, AKA and Fixer. To connect, send her a shout-out at micommunicationscc@gmail.com or find her on LinkedIn.