Pause for a moment and reflect on the following: How does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative affect intended beneficiaries and from which lessons could be learnt, adapted and replicated? These questions partially occupied my mind and as I pondered over them, I looked for answers around me, and I found many. This piece expounds on the mirage and reality dichotomy of CSR in Ghana.
With businesses focusing on making profits, CSR has not been a popular concern among companies until recently. The concept of CSR can be seen in the business environment as a mechanism for making contribution to sustainable development. This mechanism revolves around showing empathy to people that need it, running an environmentally sustainable business and providing financial and moral support to society.
Notwithstanding government’s continual efforts towards providing the basic needs of Ghanaians, it is still not devoid of pressure from other sectors of the economy. As a result, companies step in to pay their quota towards development of the nation. As a fact, a school of thought asserts that companies with CSR initiatives play an important role as agent of change whose immense contribution to improved living standards cannot be over-emphasised.
However, in the face of the huge revenue generated by companies that are into mining, banking, telecommunication, oil and gas and so forth, there is a growing concern amongst cross section of Ghanaians, including incessant pressure from civil society groups on the need for companies to adopt effective CSR policies and commit more resources to the sustainable development of communities in which they operate and the country as a whole.
It must be emphasized that CSR initiatives in Ghana are worth noting. A large number of community development efforts by Corporate Ghana are focused on economic empowerment, human resource development, infrastructure provision, natural resources management, cultural heritage promotion, sports development and so forth. To mention a few, some extractive and telecommunication companies in the country have invested in a variety of projects under education, health, gender mainstreaming, water and sanitation, ICT, economic empowerment and sports, all in the name of CSR.
While it is obvious to predict the expected benefits and impacts of these CSR projects in terms of school enrollment, security, computer literacy, potable water, livelihood empowerment, social inclusion, skills development, health care delivery and employment; a deep question emerges.
Are the intended beneficiaries experiencing these benefits and impacts as expected?
In seeking answers to the question, the ANOKS Research Team conducted a study in all the regions of Ghana focusing on communities with CSR physical projects.
Interestingly, providers of these projects and their intended beneficiaries are not on the same page as responses differ from each other. Our findings indicated that the providers and intended beneficiaries sounded positive and negative respectively. An enquiry into the negative responses revealed that community participation is partially regarded as a necessary ingredient for project implementation success. In most of the cases recorded, community members were only informed about the CSR projects during commissioning stages. A sad observation made from the field surveys was that some of the completed CSR projects have been abandoned by the intended beneficiaries.
This implies that it is possible for corporate bodies to make enormous social investments, in the name of CSR, without contributing to sustainable development. The crux of the above contention is addressed to companies with CSR initiatives. Do these companies consider the social acceptability, user satisfaction, durability and sustainability of projects before and after their implementation?
The Way Forward
In the quest to propose an appropriate measure to promote effective CSR for leveraging sustainable development in communities and Ghana at large, there is the need to consider the following:
Companies with CSR initiatives should ensure popular participation in project implementation. Best practices have it that people who are affected by particular development projects should be involved as much as possible in all stages of the implementation to ensure that detailed information on social condition and needs of the people is obtained. Popular participation helps to encourage a sense of involvement and commitment to the project by the people.
One of the cardinal points in development communication strategy is to make the beneficiaries of any development agenda part of the identification and consequent solutions to a development challenge. Participatory development should not be an imposition; it should be collaborative – beneficiaries and agents working together for success.
