Business

Commemorating Sustainability Month, Nestlé East and Southern Africa presents an exhibition profiling three of its flagship sustainability initiatives in South Africa

NAIROBI, Kenya, 15 June 2022 -/African Media Agency (AMA)/- Nestlé East and Southern Africa (ESAR) is proud to present From Linear to Circular, an art exhibition profiling three of its flagship sustainability initiatives that are part of its RE programme. The initiatives are profiled in a body of work by artist, Dillon Marsh, whose photography explores the relationship between humans and their environment. The exhibition, hosted at Melrose Gallery in Johannesburg, opened on 7^th June 2022 and will run for the duration of sustainability month, until 30^th June 2022.

From Linear to Circular captures, using Marsh’s unique lens and perspective, the ongoing development of three flagship pilot projects: RE-Imagine Tomorrow in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni; carbon capture in Hammanskraal, Pretoria; and Africa’s first net-zero dairy farm in George. These projects are near completion of their pilot stage, and their success is key to Nestlé’s fundamental shift towards embracing circular principles across its operations.

Speaking on the exhibition, and the initiatives, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Director, Saint-Francis Tohlang, said, “This exhibition is an exciting venture as it stretches us in the ways we tell meaningful stories about our sustainability commitments in South Africa and the rest of ESAR. These pilot projects have been online for over a year and this exhibition is one way of keeping track with each initiative’s development. By capturing these initiatives in a moment in time, we hope it will spark robust dialogue on principles of circularity. Each of the initiatives profiled in the body of work speaks to three principles: rethink, reduce and repurpose, and these are values that our communities in the region espouse. As Nestlé ESAR, we have scaled them for a bigger impact that can make a meaningful difference to our planet.”

RE-Imagine Tomorrow is a partnership with informal waste reclaimers; waste buy-back centre, Destination Green; and technology partner, Kudoti to evolve the waste management sub-sector. Since its launch in September 2021, the initiative has developed a playbook that has formalised data collection at buy-back centres, while empowering waste reclaimers through training, capacity building, and incentives. To date, working with 150 reclaimers, a total of 188 tonnes of waste has been collected and some of it has been sustainably processed to make dustbins that have been installed in Tembisa.

In George, Skimmelkrans Boerdery is well on its way to being Africa’s first net zero dairy farm. The pilot uses regenerative agriculture practises to trap and reduce emissions, save water, reduce energy, while increasing milk quality and productivity. Using mixed pastures increased soil carbon by an average of 0.11% in the first year, which relates to 4,723 tonnes CO₂ sequestration from the atmosphere on the 600-hectare farm. Manure management through the screw press separator prevents 500 tonnes of carbon from escaping into the atmosphere annually. Active water conservation measures at Skimmelkrans save 292,500 kilolitres a year through irrigation, and 21,900 kilolitres a year through recycling.

In Hammanskraal, at the Babelegi factory, is the industry-first carbon capture technology that draws fumes from manufacturing processes and converts them to bicarbonate of soda and water. The initiative is in partnership with the Emissions Capture Company and pending its imminent success, will be rolled out to manufacturing facilities across the region. Based on the pilot’s data, rollout of the technology will prevent 5,516 tonnes of carbon dioxide from escaping to the atmosphere, 9,284m³ potable water will be saved annually at a typical factory.

Speaking on the body of work, artist Dillon Marsh said, “Capturing landscapes has been part of my creative language and I have explored in many works, elements that show how we as a species engage both deliberately and unintentionally with our environment. For this exhibition, I have introduced computer-generated imagery to reveal underlying dynamics that can’t be illustrated with photography alone. And these are real data points from the initiatives themselves, making them more tangible and almost palpable in the storytelling.”

The opening coincides with similar campaigns in other parts of the east and southern Africa region. In Kenya, a school clean-up programme aimed at driving stewardship around waste management in schools was launched on the same day. In Mauritius, a beach clean-up is set to be hosted on World Oceans Day, driving a similar message on waste management.

“The initiatives profiled in the exhibition are tracking well, and once this pilot phase is concluded, they will be scaled in South Africa and in due course, across the region. That is a fundamental shift our business will be taking, with the aim of evolving to circular principles from the creation of raw materials, all the way to the management of waste after consumption. And this body of work captures the illustrative levers of that shift. Therefore, we hope South Africa will engage with this exhibition extensively, as the world commemorates sustainability under the theme #OnlyOneEarth,” concluded Tohlang.

Distributed by African Media Agency on behalf of Nestle.

For more information visit www.nestle-esar.com  

Contact: 

Issued by Weber Shandwick on behalf of Nestlé East and Southern Africa Region 

Name Tankiso Motsoeneng 

Tel: +27 61 374 7539 

Email: tmotsoeneng@webershandwick.com  

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Source : African Media Agency (AMA)

Business

• Mastercard and Ecobank Group will deploy Mastercard Farm Pass, an award-winning, innovative solution that helps connect smallholder farmers to financial and agricultural ecosystems
• Mastercard Farm Pass will be rolled out leveraging the 33 countries where Ecobank has banking operations, helping millions of smallholder farmers gain digital access to markets, quality inputs, financial services, and real-time pricing information

ABIDJAN, Cote d’Ivoire, 14 June 2022, /African Media Agency/- Mastercard and Ecobank Group have partnered to connect millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to Mastercard’s Farm Pass – a digital platform that makes it safer and easier for farmers to sell their produce at a fair price.

Under the partnership, Ecobank will extend the reach and impact of the Mastercard Farm Pass platform leveraging its Pan-African network of 33 countries. Many smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa face several challenges. These include limited access to markets, working capital to finance activities or secure quality inputs, and relevant financial tools to pay and get paid efficiently. This has led to insecurity, inefficiencies, and a waste of resources and food, preventing farmers from running sustainable businesses.

Farm Pass brings together various agri-sector stakeholders from the supply and demand sides, in one agricultural marketplace, amplifying the collective positive impact on farming communities. Smallholder farmers can sell their produce at a better price, access quality inputs and farming information, get paid and pay digitally and develop a financial profile that can unlock financing opportunities for working capital and inputs.

According to McKinsey and Company, more than 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa are smallholder farmers, with the agricultural sector contributing an estimated 23% of the continent’s GDP. Yet only 3% of the sector receives banking credit, limiting the farmers capacity to grow their business or mitigate poor harvest losses. By integrating their businesses with payment systems, Farm Pass enables smallholder farmers to build a digital transaction record that can facilitate formal credit or other financial services from banks and other financial institutions.

“Food security is a critical and urgent need in these times. We must therefore rise to the task by creating growth opportunities across the agriculture value chain in Africa. Our partnership with Mastercard has come at the right time to accelerate smallholder farmers’ access to urgently needed financial services, which are vital to realising Africa’s full agricultural potential. It will also help deliver value across the farming and agricultural value chain to make farming in Africa more profitable, competitive, and resilient, thus contributing to the economic growth of the continent,” says Ade Ayeyemi, CEO of Ecobank Group.

“When we empower people, we can power economies and support economic growth that is truly inclusive. Mastercard Farm Pass contributes to this by offering a digital platform that makes it easier for smallholder farmers to move from subsistence to commercial farming. This, in turn, will stimulate agricultural growth, increase competitiveness, and improve food security in Africa. Through close collaborations with important partners like Ecobank, we can create even more impact, putting the digital economy to work for everyone, everywhere,” says Michael Froman, Vice Chairman and President, Strategic Growth at Mastercard.

“The Mastercard Farm Pass collaboration with Ecobank Group fits well with the intent of the African Development Banks’s recently approved Africa Emergency Food Production Facility (AEFPF), which is to support countries to boost production and productivity on the continent for key staples. One of the key activities of AEFPF is to connect farmers through e-wallet systems, i.e. digitizing the procurement of agro inputs and at the same time allowing for reaching farmers in a transparent manner, which will truly revolutionize the transformation of agriculture,” says Solomon Quaynor, Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization, African Development Bank Group.

Since its launch in 2015, Mastercard Farm Pass has reached nearly one million smallholder farmers in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and India, enabling them to command 25%-50% higher prices and increase harvest productivity. Farm Pass is part of Mastercard’s strategy to connect underserved communities to essential services through Community Pass, a shared interoperable digital platform that supports the company’s commitment to connect one billion people and 50 million small and micro businesses to the digital economy by 2025. 

Distributed by African Media Agency on behalf of Mastercard Incorporated.

About Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA)

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all. www.mastercard.com

About Ecobank Group 

Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (‘ETI’) is the parent company of the Ecobank Group, the leading independent pan-African banking group. The Ecobank Group employs about 13,000 people and serves over 32 million customers in the consumer, commercial and corporate banking sectors across 33 African countries. The Group has a banking licence in France and representative offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Beijing, China; London, the UK and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The Group offers a full suite of banking products, services, and solutions-including digital- and not limited to bank and deposit accounts, loans, cash management, advisory, trade, securities, wealth and asset management. ETI is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos, the Ghana Stock Exchange in Accra, and the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières in Abidjan. For further information please visit www.ecobank.com 

Communications Contact:

Mastercard:

Birgit Deibele,Birgit.Deibele@mastercard.com

Ecobank:

Christiane Bossom,groupcorporatecomms@ecobank.com

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Source : African Media Agency (AMA)

Business

NAIROBI, Kenya, 13th June 2022 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Fast-growing businesses need to be supported by technology platforms that support their growth and expansion while keeping tight controls over financial and other core business processes. Siginon Group, a leading Pan-African transport and logistics company with headquarters in Nairobi-Kenya, has a service offering that includes clearing and forwarding, transportation, warehousing, contract logistics, container freight stations and a diversified portfolio in; property management, vehicle and equipment leasing and tech logistics. The Group’s rapid business growth and market dynamics sparked a business transformation project that boosted adoption of cloud services while bringing greater efficiency and transparency to key business processes.

Robin Chumari, Siginon Group’s ICT Manager adds, “We had been using SAP BusinessOne to support our operations since 2010 but following a period of rapid growth across the business, we sought a more powerful business transformation platform. Key to our requirements was a platform that could ease our inter-company accounting processes, enhance consolidated accounting, optimize our data analytics and business intelligence capabilities, customer relationship management and kick off our strategic cloud migration. We chose to migrate from SAP BusinessOne to the more feature-rich SAP ByDesign.”

According to Robin, the migration to SAP ByDesign has helped to improve its consolidated accounting practices and reduced the time and work needed to produce periodic reports. “We are also putting our enhanced business analytics into practice, which is enabling faster decision-making, while our CRM rollout will benefit our commercial team and improve tracking of sales conversions. Overall this has aligned well to our general strategy of being infrastructure-light by adopting market-leading cloud offerings.”

Siginon Group was supported throughout the implementation by experienced SAP partners A-Softech. Robin says the partner’s input on industry best practices especially from an accounting perspective has been nothing short of phenomenal. “Our partners’ ability to support our change management processes and help train our end-users has had a significant impact on the success of this implementation.”

Since the implementation of SAP ByDesign, Siginon Group has unlocked a range of business benefits, including:

•    Consolidation of a single source of data for financial planning and reporting
•   Integrating with multiple platforms and customers
•    Enhanced reporting and better adoption and use of industry best practices
•   Improved access to dashboards and KPI tracking for management
•    Improved system uptime.

“Our integration with operational systems allows for better and more accurate feedback to customers on their account status,” says Robin. “Managerial dashboards and data analytics enable quicker response to issues that could affect customers, helping us improve our retention and mitigation processes to the benefit of our customers in whichever sector. We do feel that this system is in line with our corporate aim to keep Powering Trade for our customers in the different economic sectors they’re in. Overall the project has been a huge success.”

Hardeep Sound, Regional Sales Director for East Africa at SAP, says: “African enterprises are shifting to infrastructure-light cloud services to unlock greater efficiency and scalability and be better placed to meet changing customer demands. By migrating to a more powerful business platform that can support its ambitious growth plans, Siginon Group with the expert support of A-Softech has established a powerful foundation for the company’s continued growth and success.”

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of SAP Africa.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.

About SAP 

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.   

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Source : African Media Agency (AMA)