Africa lesson #2...Small things make a big difference in Africa

One of the reoccurring elements of my career has been to embark on occasional adventure, often instigated by some level of charitable activity, generally involving some level of lunacy and/or danger. This fascination for adventure was probably initiated in 2010, when a schoolfriend and I drove a tuk-tuk 3,500km across India to raise money for water and sanitation projects – but the enjoyment for this type of activity accelerated whilst spending time in Latin America, the Middle East and now Africa.

In April 2018, we kicked off Pizza Hut Africa’s engagement with literacy through our “Slice of Africa” project which consisted of a 20,000km adventure to 14 cities across the continent, hosting events focused on raising donations to provide reading materials to children across Africa. The project has been a success, and we are on track to deliver thousands of Red Reading Boxes across Africa in April 2019.

As part of this project, our Pizza Hut Africa team celebrated World Literacy Day with the children at Boepakitso Primary School in Soweto, Johannesburg. The school children performed plays, danced and shared stories about their families and lives – we cooked lunch, played football, joked around and had fun. We gave up (only) 2 hours of our time to make a small difference to these incredible kids, but the smiles on the faces of the children were only beaten by the smiles on the Pizza Hut team.

The activities of this day really started me thinking, and in particular brought back memories of the Slice of Africa trip: doing a conga line with Shining Hope for Communities through Westgate Shopping Center in Nairobi, playing games with the Macuva Prep School in Ghana and the true highlight dancing with the Embrace Culture kids in Uganda. But the reoccurring element to all these moments is that small things make such a big difference in Africa - it doesn’t take much effort to make that important connection.

One of the real privileges of working for Yum! is that we are encouraged to invest time energizing and mobilizing our organization towards stellar business performance but also must “Lead with Heart”.  As we nurture and build our brand across the continent with the ambition to be Africa’s Pizza of Choice, the connections we make with our partners, customers, communities and suppliers are critical to our success. Making those connections could be through a major CSR initiative, but also through the simple things that matter. Every business that operates across Africa should try to do something, no matter how small – this incredible continent will embrace it.

Whilst opening our beautiful George restaurant in RSA with Tony Ozanne and our Marathon partners, we took a moment to visit KFC (our sister brand). On the wall, we noticed a certificate for Commitment to Product Excellence signed by the awesome Doug Smart, former GM KFC Africa. This inspired me to question my own leadership and think through how we let team members know in Pizza Huts across Africa how much we appreciate everything they do, on top of the recognition we give when we visit the restaurants.

So, the first of our “Small Things Make a Huge Difference” cards are going out this month to 16 of our 2000+ Pizza Hut family including the amazing Elize Ras from Marathon below, just to say thanks for the incredible efforts that our team members go to on behalf of our amazing brand. 

As I often highlight to my team, the face of Pizza Hut in Africa is not me, or my leadership team, or even the CEO of the franchise partner we work with. The real face of Pizza Hut in Africa is the team member taking your order in the restaurants or the driver delivering pizza to your door. They are the most important people in our world, and we can’t say thank you often enough.