by Oke Enechi

 

Ada is her parent’s last child and so much loved by them. Today, she is having fever but the parents, very poor cannot afford to take her to any nearby health center. As the desperation of the mother continues to increase, the father remembered he bought a medicine at the last market day – a black liquid concoction in a bottle. The seller popularly known as “doctor” in the village market claims it cures every ailment including jaundice in a day old baby. He smiled and gave the bottle to the wife. “I bought it from the doctor at the last market day, give her, I believe she will be ok”, he told her. The wife looked at him calmly and took the bottle from him. She also believes in the ‘efficacy’ of the medicine. One of her friends told her once of the ability of “doctor’s” medicines.

Quickly she administered the dark liquid to the baby. But after one hour, the fever increased. Terrified! They have no option but to rush her to the village health center and see if the nurse there can treat the baby while they pay later. On the way to the health center, the baby died.

The baby would have lived if the parents had treated mosquito nets to protect her against mosquito bites. The child would have been saved if there is a micro health insurance targeting the poor that provides a safety net for them – Ada would have been rushed to the hospital in the first place without any hesitation.

Beautiful Ada would have been living, playing with her mates if NAFDAC is active in the rural areas to arrest and prosecute merchants of death such as “doctor”. Ada would have been living if companies are executing targeted CSR projects in the rural areas providing health education, developing innovative micro health insurance products and providing health facilities such as treated mosquito nets etc. But all these did not happen and she died.

But in faraway cities, in good hotels and good office complexes, business executives and their employees are busy thinking of ways of coming in to help out in promoting good health. But they waste precious time arguing about the conceptual differences that exist between corporate social responsibility, corporate social investment and corporate philanthropy while the societal vulnerable suffer untold hardship including death daily. Yes, conceptually there are differences. But does it really matter? Corporate social responsibility (CSR) according to a study conducted by GTZ in conjunction with other institutions on the factors that promotes or hinders CSR in sub-Sahara Africa, is viewed as “accountability of companies, to both share-holders and stakeholders, for their utilisation of resources, for their means of production, for their treatment of workers and consumers, for their impact on the social and ecological environment in which they operate and for the way in which they exercise their legislative and fiduciary duties” and the same report view the concept of Corporate social investment (CSI) as “the way in which companies care for the well-being of the social and ecological environment of the communities in which they operate. To this end they invest, in a variety of ways, in the advancement of certain socially and/or environmentally defined needs, projects or causes extraneous to their regular business activities”. Corporate philanthropy is an act of corporations donating part of their profits to NGOs to execute projects for the benefit of the society. That is why I find the piece on the corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility reproduced from the CSR Academy in the last edition of this magazine very interesting. The differences in my opinion are rather blurred and the societal vulnerable do not see these differences rather they look forward to anybody – be it corporation or any other organisation – that can help to improve their lives. And this is where the view of Dayo George, the Head of CSR & Communications, BAT, West Africa that “CSR is not just about community development, it is a total package and it is the totality of what you do internally to drive sustainability”, becomes very instructive. The truth is that CSR is viewed as a community development here because of our state of development. This view seems to be confirmed by a study conducted in 2009 by GTZ on the factors that promotes and hinders CSR in Sub-Sahara Africa, where it was found that most of the ‘would be’ beneficiaries of CSR projects in Sub Saharan countries surveyed prefer community development projects. Also another study conducted by Jantzi Sustainalytics strongly highlighted the role of multinational companies in realization of the MDGs in the sub-Sahara Africa. USAID also argue in one of their documents that the business community has a very critical role to play by providing “tremendous contributions in promoting good health and well-being” of the society. These views strongly suggest that CSR in our part of the world should be community development driven.

In my view, companies rather than discuss the differences, need to urgently blend the three conceptual models if they really want to make an impact with their CSR. There is no point dissipating energy on the conceptual differences of corporate social responsibility, corporate philanthropy and corporate social investment when there is much they can do to be of help to the society where they operate and earn profit. The societal vulnerable wants to see a project that will impact on their life and don’t care whatever names you call it.