Our Humanity: Because we care

By focusing on community and what we call Our Humanity, the organisation that I lead is building resilience and reinventing the possible. That’s PwC Africa’s strategy, in a nutshell: Our Humanity. What does this mean for doing business in Africa and facing the future with optimism? Everything.

PwC’s recent Africa CEO survey shows that factors like technological change, regulations and evolving customer preferences are likely to impact the way that companies create value going forward. Over 80% of CEOs are reinventing their business models to some extent, with potential game-changers like AI and climate change being top of mind. Risks like inflation and macroeconomic volatility may threaten their companies’ ability to create value, however, with 40% unsure whether their companies will even be viable in ten years’ time.

As any CEO will tell you - including me - this survey paints a very complex picture of reality on the ground. We really don’t know to what extent AI or climate change will impact us in the future. We also don’t know to what degree inflation or macroeconomic volatility could shake the social structure in our countries to the core. With so much uncertainty and at the same time, so many potential opportunities, how can CEOs find their True North?

The answer, as I see it, is to lean into Africa’s remarkable, historic and world-leading resilience. I would argue that building upon this tradition can help us thrive through reinvention and change.

But resilience is not cultivated in a vacuum. A great many factors contribute to an organisation’s resilience, or an individual CEO’s resilience. Some of these factors are within our control and some are not, but for me the focus has to be on community. Again, I am drawing upon my heritage as an African and my pride in Africa: we have a long-standing tradition of community, solving problems together and making a difference in each other’s lives.

At PwC Africa, our societal purpose and Our Humanity drives real action and delivers meaningful change.

Our Humanity is a strategy that guides us to deliver quality and impactful client work. I try to spend as much time with our PwC people as possible, and recently one of our auditors told me a remarkable story about her client, a medical scheme in South Africa. She had been working very hard over a number of weeks, but there was a spark in her eye when she told me that she was proud of having delivered the audit because it meant that the medical scheme could demonstrate its compliance and financial performance - critical factors to building trust in any society. By doing so, the medical scheme could continue to offer valuable healthcare services to its members. Meaning, she said, that it could provide cover for procedures like hip replacements.

I was struck by her story and felt an enormous amount of pride. This is what we mean by Our Humanity.

As a business, our objective is to contribute meaningfully to Africa’s development, helping to build stronger societies, drawing on the strength of our diversity to create meaningful opportunities. We all know how challenging youth unemployment is in Africa and although the business community has done a remarkable job of creating new jobs, it’s still not enough. We have to do more. There are many examples, but one from my business is the recent launch of the South Africa Technology and Innovation Centre, a joint venture with PwC UK, which will create at least 1,000 new technology jobs. At a global level, we continue to collaborate with UNICEF in support of Generation Unlimited, an initiative aimed at helping young people transition from school to work which has had a remarkable impact in Africa.

As a business, we have also joined a coalition of private sector businesses to support South Africa’s energy and logistics sectors, recognising their importance to the country’s growth, competitiveness and development. That coalition is also committed to fighting crime and corruption. In our business, this means complying with existing laws, regulations and international best practices and assisting our clients to do the same. We all need to do our part, building inroads and collaboration between the public and private sectors. A shared sense of societal purpose will build the future that we want, in South Africa and beyond.

There are many risks ahead of us, and no crystal ball. But we can face the future together, and draw upon our African heritage to build more resilient communities. This moment requires trusted leadership and the time is now to come together in support and celebration of our shared humanity. That’s what we stand for as PwC Africa, and I hope you will join us.