Business in the community strengthens its global partnerships in Africa

Business in the Community is strengthening its partnership with two key partner organisations in Africa - the National Business Initiative (NBI) and the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship(AICC), with the aim of providing support to member companies who have operations or supply chain relationships in Africa building business partnerships to engage in development programmes

NBI is BITCís partner organisation in South Africa. A business led not for profit organisation with over 150 companies. NBI has operated for the last ten years as the leading business coalition focused on the role of business in sustainable development and is the regional partner of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

AICC is a pan African not for profit organisation working to promote corporate citizenship across Africa. Current programmes include a focus on the finance sector, competitiveness and innovation with a capacity building programme for NGOís in 5 African countries and corporate accountability. AICC has also recently launched the Africa Corproate Sustainability Forum to provide a focus for responsible business practice across the continent.

Both organisations actively support New Partnerships for Africaís Development (NEPAD) which includes a business commitment to:-

- develop best practice in corporate governments

- to continue the improvements of quality and effectiveness of CSR programmes

- to support African Governments to achieve best practice standards of economic developments

The partnership between BITC, NBI and AICC will support the delivery of the objectives of the Commission for Africa which will be reporting early in 2005. NBI and AICC will also be supporting the Award for Excellence in corporate citizenship in Africa which will be presented on July 5th at BITCís annual awards evening at the Albert Hall.

Julia Cleverdon welcomed this partnership as a demonstration of BITCís commitment to play an active role in the action plan being developed under the UK chairmanship of G8. She said:

We know the importance of collaborative action by business and hope that we can contribute to the development of such networks in Africa. Many of our member companies have extensive business interests and our partnership with NBI and AICC will support their efforts to improve the social, environmental and economic impact of these operations.