MTN Ghana has urged small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to integrate sustainability into their business operations to build resilience, attract investment and remain competitive.
Madam Adwoa Wiafe, Chief Corporate Services and Sustainability Officer of MTN Ghana, said sustainability should not be viewed as the responsibility of large corporations alone, but as a collective responsibility requiring the participation of SMEs.
She said SMEs formed a key part of MTN Ghana’s sustainability focus, noting that the company had commercial products and programmes specifically designed to support the growth of small businesses.
“SMEs form a key part of our focus. We normally have products from a commercial perspective for SMEs, and even from the foundation, our CSI programmes, we have a whole programme dedicated to SMEs,” she said.
Madam Wiafe was speaking at an MTN Ghana sustainability workshop for SMEs in Accra, organised as part of the company’s Sustainability Month activities.
She said MTN Ghana had, over the past two years, dedicated time annually to raising awareness about sustainability and encouraging businesses to embed sustainable practices into their operations.
She explained that the company’s approach was centred on creating shared value by ensuring that business growth also contributed to the wellbeing of communities, people and the environment.
“For us, it is about shared value. How do we make sure that as we are doing our business and growing as a business, we are also supporting our communities and taking into account some of the environmental issues that we need to address to protect and preserve our environment?” she said.
Madam Wiafe said the workshop was intended to help SMEs adopt practices that would make their businesses more resilient and sustainable while positioning them to attract funding and new customers.
She noted that consumers were becoming increasingly sophisticated and were demanding greater information about how products were produced, designed and taken to market.
She said businesses that demonstrated responsible environmental, social and ethical practices would increasingly have an advantage in accessing markets and building customer confidence.
Madam Wiafe said MTN Ghana was therefore seeking to bring SMEs into its sustainability journey rather than pursuing the agenda alone.
“We started this journey saying that sustainability is a collective responsibility, trying to galvanise action around what we can all do to make sure that businesses are projecting that image of doing things and doing them well, taking into account our environment, our people and the ethics of doing business,” she said.
She said the initiative was being driven under the theme of “Small Actions, Big Impact,” encouraging SMEs to recognise that meaningful sustainability interventions could be achieved even with limited resources.
“Don’t think of yourself as a big business. There are certain things that big businesses can do that small businesses cannot do, but there are also areas of opportunity for small businesses,” she said.
Madam Wiafe said MTN Ghana, in collaboration with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), had developed a sustainability toolkit to guide SMEs in understanding and implementing sustainable business practices.
The participating businesses would also take part in a sustainability challenge designed to encourage innovation and demonstrate practical solutions to sustainability challenges.
She said the programme would culminate in recognition and awards for SMEs that demonstrated innovative approaches to sustainability.
Madam Wiafe said SMEs would remain a key focus of MTN Ghana’s sustainability initiatives as the company continued to encourage businesses to demonstrate how small interventions could generate significant economic, social and environmental benefits.
Mr Bernard Owusu-Ansah, Manager, Governance, Risk and Compliance and ESG Services at KPMG Ghana, and a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in Ghana, said SMEs constituted a critical backbone of the Ghanaian economy and should therefore be fully integrated into the country’s sustainability agenda.
He said ACCA was pleased to partner MTN Ghana to engage SMEs on sustainability and equip them with the knowledge needed to improve their businesses.
“SMEs are part of the backbone of our country. As we engage our big clients, it is also important that we engage these SMEs,” he said.
Mr Ansah said sustainability was about meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
He said although SMEs might undertake relatively small sustainability initiatives, their collective contribution could have a significant impact on the economy and society.
“The key takeaway for us in this session is that SMEs are doing small things in their own way, but the things they are doing contribute greatly to the impacts that we are creating as an economy,” he said.
He urged SMEs to better understand sustainability principles, improve their practices and communicate the value created through their initiatives.
