The Business of Sustainable Development in Africa. Human Rights, Partnerships, Alternative Business Models

Citation

Mesure, H. (2009), "The Business of Sustainable Development in Africa. Human Rights, Partnerships, Alternative Business Models", Society and Business Review, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 268-270. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbr.2009.4.3.268.3

The three editors are South African scholars that work on development, sustainability or constitutional law. They are also used to intervene in public development programs. They are linked to the Centre of Corporate Citizenship at the University of South Africa (Pretoria).

This collective book originates from the Global Compact 4th International Learning Forum Meeting in Ghana in November 2006. The United Nation (UN) Global Compact is a world corporate citizenship initiative that lies together UN agencies, labour and civil society to support universal environmental and social principles. The Global Compact's ten principles are meant to trigger and guide responsible business behaviour at the micro level of private enterprises as well as collective action between companies. The Global Compact program lies on the principle that the contribution and the commitment of private sector are essential to reach sustainable development. The November 2006 Forum Meeting focussed on enterprises initiatives in Africa in favour of sustainable development or business and human right throughout Africa whatever the type of country or the context (zones of conflict, peace countries, etc.). The book follows two aims. First, the book presents and contextualises the role of 16 enterprises working for sustainable development in the sub‐Saharan Africa. Second, the book presents a conceptual framework to analyses the role of enterprises in development. Its general purpose is to contribute to a better understanding of the enterprises role in sustainable development and its implication for managers and to some extent for governments and civil society. The editors consider corporate citizenship from a broad analytical point of view. They do not focus only on the firm but they also consider the role of supply chains, government's policies and civil society groups to understand the effective and possible enterprises contribution to sustainable development in sub‐Africa. The book is divided in two parts. The first one is the conceptual part and the second one is the practical part since it is composed of 16 cases studies.

The first part is made of four chapters. The first one is “Introducing corporate citizenship” in the context of Africa. Clearly, the editors defend a “contingency approach” of this concept. The chapter also presents the UN Global Compact principles that asks companies to embrace, support and act, within there sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labour standard, environment and anti‐corruption. It underlines the tensions between what should be done and what is effectively done or possible in matter of corporate citizenship. The second chapter is about one aspect of the corporate citizenship: the human rights. Stu Woolman discusses on how African enterprises can implement human rights considering their specific context. The third chapter deals with the role of partnership and collaboration between business, government and civil society in achieving sustainable objectives at the enterprises level. The fourth chapter focuses on alternative enterprise practices to reach, at least, the minimum “or the bottom of the pyramid” in matter of corporate citizenship or UN Global Compact principles. The book's focus on three themes (human rights, partnership and alternative approach) does not mean that other aspects of citizenship corporation are less important but only that there are particularly relevance in the African context. The analytical and conceptual above elements are more or less used in the second part of the book that is made of a set of business cases.

The 16 cases rage from “micro business” to “big business”, from local one to international. Most of the cases studies are drawn from the UN Global Compact Meeting in Ghana. Some cases studies have been written by independent case authors in collaboration with companies. The other cases studies have more eclectic origins since they come from scholar's researches projects, UN's programs or enterprises initiatives. Therefore, they are not uniform. They can be descriptive or theoretical. They also differ in style and construction. Together, they bring a diverse and concrete “representation” of what can be the corporate citizenship “state of practice” in sub‐Africa.

The book lacks a general conclusion. Nevertheless, the book achieves a good balance between cases studies and academical discussions. It especially provides a good look on Africa business that is often ignored by the mainstream researches in CSR. Theoretically, it has two originalities. It reasons in terms of “sphere of influence”. Studying an enterprise from a citizenship perspective, the authors invite us to take in account the supply chain it belongs and all its partners (whatever their nature). Second, the book underlines the importance of the country or the territory as a mean factor of the CSR.