Sixth Ghana CSR excellence awards launched

The Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility West Africa has launched the sixth edition of the Ghana Corporate Social Responsibility Excellence Awards (GHACEA).

The GHACEA was launched at a CSR conference in Accra by the President of the Federation of Association of Ghanaian Exporters, Mr Anthony Sikpa, with support from the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), the UNDP’s National Coordinator of the SDGs Philanthropy Platform in Ghana, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and other organisations.

Launching the sixth GHACEA, Mr Anthony Sikpa lauded the awards scheme which seeks to evaluate and reward CSR, saying that it would spur the private sector to do more in CSR and advance society’s development.

According to John Kojo Williams, Lead Project Manager at the Centre for CSR West Africa, the GHACEA “has injected a new paradigm into how businesses give back to society and companies are now better informed about their roles in society.”

Entries will be open from now until June 24, 2016 for the awards which will take place in September.

Ms Pearl Darko, the National Coordinator of the SDGs Philanthropy Platform in Ghana, highlighted the critical importance of CSR from the private sector, in complementing the efforts of government to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals which government cannot achieve alone.

The Country Director of JICA Mr Koji Makino, said the Japanese development agency was going beyond providing the Government of Ghana with direct aid, to helping the private sector enhance its efficiency and to be a catalyst among government, the private sector and academia.

Entries for the awards, said to be modelled after the European CSR awards, are vetted by a multi-stakeholder jury drawn from academia, business associations, civil society organisations, regulatory agencies, international development partners and the media.

The award categories include CSR Company of the Year, Chief Executive Officer of the Year, Practitioner of the Year, and the Best CSR Company in a range of fields including banking, insurance, telecoms, agribusiness, aviation, real estate, engineering, mining and others.

By Emmanuel Odonkor