- Tsaone Segaetsho
Managing director of Wise Leadership, Mpho Kgosietsile, has urged companies to embed the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework in operations, and to endorse a culture of sustainability.
“Boards should establish a culture of sustainability and start to think of ESG as a matter that is to be discussed from a strategy perspective on a daily board agenda,” said Kgosietsile.
Kgosietsile was speaking at the second Annual ESG and Sustainable Finance Forum 2024, hosted by Africa Sustainable Finance Intensive (ASFI) and MNCapital Botswana, under the theme, “Resilience Amid Uncertainty” in Gaborone this week.
Kgosietsile was among the panelists on discussion around how pension funds and insurers are internalising sustainability, and what matters most to them when it comes to embedding sustainability.
On the same panel discussion was speaker Rodney Ndamba from Institute of Sustainability Africa (INSA), who gave an example of how ESG is being embedded in corporations such as the banks in Zimbabwe.
Ndamba says banks in Botswana’s northern neighbour give funding to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), from whom they require the adoption of the ESG framework as a prerequisite for financial support.
Another panelists, Adrian Mill, the Chief Executive Officer of Environmental Social Sustainability(ESS), said in Senegal, West Africa, banks also require ESG as a prerequisite for offering funding to companies, something that he believes would be beneficial if it were adopted by Botswana.
Mill, who resides in Senegal and joined the panel discussion digitally from the West African nation, said companies should make it their responsibility to make ESG part of their strategy and it should be seen as negligence for companies to disregard ESG, or those who merely want to benefit from the perception of conforming to sustainability without the actual commitment, through a process called ‘greenwashing’.
Mill further warned that ignorance about the importance of ESG does result in legal, financial and reputational repercussions, which is why it is vital for businesses to integrate financial sustainability into their business models.
