A leading sustainability advocacy and social enterprise, CSR-in-Action Advocacy, a CSR awareness and advancement initiative, has announced the commencement of the 2018/2019 edition of its flagship report on corporate responsibility, the Corporate Sustainable Investor Report (CSIR) – previously known as the Collective Social Investment Report – with Ernst & Young (EY), a reputable business consulting firm.
Launched in 2012 at the 17th Nigerian Economic Summit, with Tony Elumelu, chairman, UBA Group and founder, Tony Elumelu Foundation, former minister of National Planning Commission, Usman Shamsuddeen, and Frank Nweke Jr., director-general, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), the CSIR is a one-stop databank for measurable non-financial information on businesses in Nigeria with a focus on the private sector.
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It also includes public/private enterprise, foundations and multilateral organisations. The Report will feature the CSR-in-Action Corporate Citizenship Index (3C-Index) – West Africa’s premier index of companies sustainability practise.
The CSIR, which is in its fourth edition, is designed to foster the adoption of global best practices by providing standardised comparative indices on the sustainability approach of organisations in Nigeria, as well as to drive improvement of their sustainability practices and reporting standards in line with globally accepted principles including the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Environmental and Social Performance Standards, the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Standards and to promote corporate contribution to Nigeria’s attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Report has enjoyed impressive acceptance by both local and international investors and stakeholders.
As part of efforts to maintain excellent delivery of the Report, CSR-in-Action has re-engineered the report-development process into four clear phases of delivery: upgrade of the indices to cover economy, governance, environment and social impacts; data collation by independent third parties and reviewed companies through direct submissions from companies, desktop research, and sustainability and financial reports; review by EY and final approval by our Board.
All of this is to ensure that the Index and the Report are at least of equivalent standards to internationally acclaimed indices such as the FTSE 4 Good and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
In the words of Bekeme Masade-Olowola, executive director, CSR-in-Action, “Partnerships are ever more crucial to our success this year. An intrinsic part of being responsible is responsiveness and we trust that more companies will respond to our quest for information in a timely manner. Our approach to stakeholder engagement and management is so much more sophisticated that we expect more robust data.
“We are especially excited that we have retained the support of such reputable knowledge partners as Ernst & Young; their partnership is indicative of why they have remained relevant in our ever-evolving world.”
CSR-in-Action Advocacy secured independent funding for the 2019 Corporate Sustainable Investor Report outside of private sector investment to further ensure accountability and fairness in reporting through Global Rights – a leading human rights capacity-building non-governmental organisation – and The Open Society Foundation – one of the largest philanthropic organisations in the world which focuses on freedom, democracy, and human rights.
