Cheers to a green growth future!

My beloved Nairobi city is abuzz this week as we host the inaugural Africa Climate Summit 2023.

The continental Summit organisers have designed this Summit to serve as a platform to inform, frame and influence commitments, pledges and outcomes that will lead to concerted climate action.

Our President William Samoei Ruto, PhD, has been actively championing the staging of this Summit, convened by the Government of Kenya and the African Union, to address the increasing exposure to climate change and its associated costs globally and particularly in Africa.

For this reason, all cadre of leadership, including tens of heads of state from African countries and other global public and private sector leaders, are in Nairobi for this three-day Summit.

As the delegates settle down in their respective meeting rooms, breakout and plenary sessions to catalyse this agenda geared at driving green growth and climate finance solutions for Africa and the world, I reflected on the enormity of climate action and sustainability this morning.

See, these delegates are not in Nairobi for a well-deserved holiday. They are in Nairobi to participate in a race against time to save humanity. If we don’t put our words into action as business leaders, the next generation may never forgive us for having consigned them to a living nightmare and furnace of a world.

As business leaders, with or without the Africa Climate Summit, we must put meaningful sustainability and climate action initiatives into high gear. Like we closely monitor our balance sheets, we must now monitor our climate action interventions more closely and ensure that our growth strategies incorporate climate action or planet as the cross-cutting foundation for a real triple bottom line growth agenda.

In my corner at Unga Group Ltd, we have commenced the race through several initiatives, including a renewable energy generating project. We are investing more than Kshs 300 million shillings to integrate solar panels in five of our manufacturing sites in Kenya to diversify our energy sources, avoiding overreliance on the national grid and reducing our carbon footprint by 2,454 tons of CO2/year. The adoption of solar power units will help this total food company slash its power costs by more than 27% and occasion more than Kshs 80 million annual savings against our power bill.

That’s not all; at Unga, we are also finetuning several climate action projects as we actively track and monitor sustainability metrics through our Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, allowing us to monitor and prioritise renewable energy, recycle product packaging and materials, and encourage environmental and social responsibility among our suppliers.

Internally, we also focus on water harvesting, treatment, and wastewater management. In addition to harvesting rainwater and installing low-energy lighting, we are working to reduce waste production by reducing, reusing, and recycling where possible. We have increased the use of recycled materials and components in repairs where possible.

Additionally, we are leveraging byproducts from our milling operation to use in the animal feeds business, and any surplus is sold in the open market. With this move, we are cutting raw material costs and reducing our solid waste production.

As the delegates attending the Africa Climate Summit settle to draft and chart the Nairobi Declaration, I commit to continue leading from the front in ensuring that Unga Group’s growth endeavours will always be green growth-centred.

Have yourself a great week!

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