Corporate Social Responsibility: the answer to WANA’s development prayers?

As the next round of development targets are agreed to we must ensure that partnerships with the private sector are designed to generate maximum impact for the social development issues that matter most.

Over the past 15 years, the world has benchmarked its development progress against the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. These are poised to be replaced by a new collection of goals and targets - the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - within the next year. Why? Because we’ve failed to achieve the first set.

In the West Asia – North Africa (WANA) region, we haven’t even come close.

Considerable educational developments in the WANA region have been mitigated by continuing poverty and food and water scarcity, while progress made towards gender equality has been disappointing at best.  Worse still, since 2010, the turmoil caused by the Arab Spring has slowed, halted or even reversed some of the progress made since 1990.

It begs the question: if we are intent on going down the path of yet another, albeit modified, set of goals, what is going to make this time around any different?

Many have offered their ideas and suggestions. For example, include previously omitted targets that relate to peace and justice, take regional differences into consideration rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, and keep the targets realistic rather than ambitious. A further suggestion is that the private sector needs to play a bigger role and be held accountable for their contribution. In other words, corporations need to put their money where their mouth is.

As far back as the 1970s we can trace the global rise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): the conscious and strategic decision of businesses to spend money “doing good” in the communities in which they operate. The reasons for doing so are varied: to manage risk and public criticism of business practices, to recruit a certain calibre of employee, to save money, to make money, to gain access to different markets, to differentiate themselves from competitors, and (every so often) because it is simply the right thing to do. Essentially, it takes the notion that businesses exist to serve society, and pushes it one step further: being sustainable and creating good outcomes for society is a fundamental role of doing good business.

In the WANA region, the development of CSR has been slow and uneven. In the 1990s and early 2000s, practices were centred around philanthropic giving and partnering with government or monarchical organisations and charities. In many cases, these activities were not driven by a desire to enact a CSR strategy, but rather, the result of a culturally intrinsic imperative to give alms and pressure to remain on-side with the political elite who could very easily make business activities difficult if they so desired.

More recently, however, things have changed. Led by the large oil companies, banks and telcos, there has been a rise in theme-based CSR programs in the areas of education, literacy, environmental protection and even government transparency. We have witnessed a re-conception of CSR to where company success and society success are not seen as mutually exclusive, but rather interwoven and complimentary.

Additionally, support from both the public and employees has surged for such programs. In a 2013 survey, 90% of professionals felt that the corporate sector in the WANA region has a moral responsibility to engage in CSR and 95% felt it’s important that their company is socially responsible. Interestingly, 73% of professionals in the region prefer volunteering time and effort, compared to 27% who prefer donating money. Clearly, there is both support and a willingness to support CSR initiatives.

So how does this fit into the SDGs? We know that for development initiatives to be successful they must be multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary. Collaborative efforts can lead to greater capacity to affect change and stronger networks between civil society and the public and private sectors leads to increased impact.

Corporations can become the catalyst needed to upset cycles of marginalisation and poverty in the WANA region. By partnering with well-established development agencies who have years of programming experience and expertise, the private sector can provide the financial resources, technical solutions, and in some cases people-power, to implement evidence-based and tested development solutions. Additionally, the development sector can gain immensely from sharing in some of the business practices and philosophies that underpin successful private sector organisations. Some innovative CSR programs have a set budget allocation to provide training to non-profit staff to up-skill them on everything from computer literacy through to management principles.

Most importantly, however, these initiatives must address relevant, substantive and important development challenges. Simply handing out cheques to schools and hospitals isn’t going to cut it. Instead, CSR strategies need to be targeting some of the more controversial issues such as women’s empowerment, good governance, access to justice, and labour rights protection.

Yes, this might land companies in hot water with their PR departments and they may lose political favour. But there are ways and means to approach these issues without being overtly antagonistic or damaging the company’s bottom line.

For example, a specific initiative to place more females into the workforce through up-skilling programs, targeted recruitment drives, awareness campaigns, gender ratios and the profiling of senior women business leaders is a way businesses can begin to alter the low female workforce participation rates, while at the same time building on pre-existing gender empowerment strategies.

Large multi-nationals, such as Microsoft and Google have been dominant in the CSR space in the WANA region, donating the time of staff and software tools to help build electronic voting platforms and refugee management systems in partnership with governments. It is time for local and small-to-medium enterprises to step up and start carrying some of this burden too. Especially since research suggests that locally driven programs have more chance of being accepted and implemented on the ground, rather than being viewed as imperialistic interference or attempts to “westernise” the region.

Take the community of Jabal Nathif for example. Located in East Amman, it is home to many refugees, however it isn’t classified as a refugee camp. Consequently it is significantly under-resourced. Ruwaad, a non-profit organisation funded by regional companies such as Aramex and Cairo Amman Bank, began working with the community to develop programmes related to education, governance and health. Taking the time to do an in-depth situation analysis to determine the actual needs of the community (this took 12 months) meant that the programmes that were developed were in line with what the community both wanted and needed, and have been largely successful. This shows that good CSR goes beyond the marketing department: it is well planned, evidence based, programming.

Is it reasonable to expect businesses to act as social changemakers regardless of economic disincentives or potential political backlash? Absolutely. Business must come to realise that the unequal wealth, rights and resource distribution in the WANA region actually translates into significant costs for society at large, which can ultimately impact them directly. You just have to think back to the Arab Spring to see how badly business were impacted, and in some cases still are now, through interrupted freight pathways, vandalism, boycotts, and the repeal of international investment to see that a peaceful and functioning society is vital for a prosperous economy.

The onus, however, is not just on the private sector. Governments too have a role to play. For CSR to work, there must be a thriving, or at the very least functioning, private sector. It cannot be based on an informal economy or black market, and can’t be besieged by corruption and government interference.

The case for CSR in the WANA region has never been as compelling. With changing public sentiment, coupled with a ground surge in social activism and volunteerism, the time is ripe to take advantage of the large pool of money and resources the private sector can offer and start building more collaborative and sustainable development programs. If we see more multi-sector partnerships, perhaps this time around the SDGs will have a chance of succeeding.