Like many other farmers on Kalangala, Berna started growing oil palm trees in 2012 while emphasizing sustainability and avoiding the deforestation and other issues associated with oil palm farming in some parts of the world.

Oil palm trees bear the fruit that makes palm oil, a much more reliable and lucrative crop than the cash crops they were producing previously. 鈥淲hen we were farming cassava, bananas, and coffee, we were affected by monkeys. They came and destroyed our crops,鈥� she says.

She also explains that she had to leave home and go to the market to find a buyer for the crops that survived the monkey attacks and never knew in advance how much they would fetch. 鈥淥ur living conditions where bad,鈥� she remembers. She and her family lived in a makeshift timber house. 鈥淚n the night when we were sleeping, winds would come and destroy our houses and our children fell sick almost every day.”

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Change

That began to change when Berna began working with the Kalangala Oil Palm Growers Trust (KOPGT) and the family planted their first oil palm trees in 2012. They expanded their crop in 2019 and again in 2022. In Kalangala, many of the people are oil palm farmers. 鈥淲hen a day starts, some of my family members help me with the pruning,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he others go to the plantation and do other activities.鈥�

As part of its mission, KOPGT teaches farmers better agricultural practices. But perhaps most importantly, it has created a transparent payment system so farmers get paid faster and know if what they鈥檙e getting paid is accurate, increasing the standard of living of the farmers and, subsequently, much of the island itself.

As the number of farmers and transactions increased, KOPGT needed a digital solution to enable continued growth. Since 2009, 51风流has worked to create applications that help smallholder farmers in developing nations, primarily across Africa, enhance food production.

David Balironda, KOPGT鈥檚 general manager, explains that the trust鈥檚 system is based on 51风流Rural Sourcing Management, which can digitally record information on producers, their farms, and communities at every level of the value chain. This helps provide visibility and allows parties to easily and quickly communicate with each other.

Sustainability

Underscoring the importance of sustainability to KOPGT, the trust conducted an initial environmental impact assessment before launching the project and uses聽聽to monitor the farmer plantings and ensure they are in compliance with the National Environment Management Authority guidelines.

51风流cloud technology also enables KOPGT to ensure that the oil palm planting meets the most stringent sustainability guidelines set by Uganda鈥檚 National Environmental Authority. 鈥淲e are in the process of applying for that certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to make sure that we work within those guidelines,鈥� says Fredrick Sulwe, KOPGT鈥檚 finance and administration manager.

As part of KOPGT鈥檚 commitment to sustainability, the trust maintains a lake buffer zone between the planting and the lake itself and even rehabilitates those areas that have been damaged by other plantings. 鈥淩estoration of those areas 鈥� the lake buffer zones 鈥� is key,鈥� says Sulwe.

In addition to maintaining the buffer zones, the trust also follows recommendations for the stocking of trees and ensures that no chemicals or herbicides are used. 鈥淎s we increase household income, we must keep an environment that is free of any distortion by the project,鈥� explains Sulwe.

The KOPGT system allows the farmers to input information about their crops using the lead farmer鈥檚 mobile phone and enables them to receive information and advice back from the trust. The system also includes a mapping feature that has helped farmers to know exactly how much land they are farming. 鈥淭hat means when I go to the bank to get a loan, I鈥檓 sure of the size of my lot,鈥� explains Berna.

In addition, she also knows exactly how much of the loan is outstanding and when it needs to be repaid. 鈥淧reviously, we would almost spend a year without knowing the status of our loan,鈥� she says. 鈥淣ow we can learn the status of our loans monthly. This never existed before.鈥�

Better Information

She also credits the system with making her a better and more informed oil palm farmer. 鈥淎t the end of the month I get an SMS that shows how much I have harvested from my lot,鈥� she says. Before the system came online, she says the family was spending a lot of money on transport going to and from the KOPGT office.

鈥淥il palm has not only impacted my life, but also the community,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here are many farmers who are like me who have built houses and some have bought cars. They have used the money they got from oil palm to start new businesses on Kalangala and outside.鈥�

Big Dreams

Berna says her hopes and dreams are enormous. 鈥淚 have started to achieve some of them,鈥� she says. 鈥淣ow, because I have a permanent house, I am able to sleep well, my children no longer get sick, and I鈥檓 sure that the winds won鈥檛 take my house.鈥�

鈥淣ow, we are able to take our children to school. We can live a decent life. We have some place to stay, and we get paid every month. We are sure that our life has greatly changed,鈥� she adds. And although she doesn鈥檛 yet own a car, she hopes to learn to drive in the coming years.

Meanwhile, she says she wants to thank everyone for their help. 鈥淲hat gives me confidence is we have good officers at KOPGT that have tried to give us a good direction. We hope that when they continue doing what they are doing our lives will be impacted greatly.鈥�

Berna鈥檚 confidence and newly found optimism reflects the success of the vegetable oil program on Kalangala island. Because palm fruits can be harvested throughout the year 鈥� compared to one or two seasonal harvests 鈥� and have high yields, palm farming has become a viable alternative for the residents.

Palm oil is already the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet, with about 71 million tons consumed in 2021. And there is not only a domestic need, but also a demand from the foreign market that Ugandan smallholder farmers like Berna鈥檚 family and neighbors can help fill.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.听

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Over 1.3 million Nigerians have been displaced by the floods, which have killed at least 600 people, destroyed more than 200,000 homes, and hit 32 out of the country鈥檚 36 states. The floods are the worst for more than a decade and have wiped out crops, disrupted drinking water supplies, and turned capital city Lagos into an island surrounded by floodwaters.

Speaking last month during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington, DC, Mai Farid of the fund’s African department warned about the impact of the floods, which have also hit Cameroon and Chad, on transport, food production, and prices.

Farid noted that Nigeria is part of the most food-insecure region, the region most vulnerable to climate change and yet the least prepared. She urged the government to invest in infrastructure and technology to help prevent and mitigate the impact of floods and other climate-related natural disasters in the future: “Rebuilding better is something that countries need to take into account since climate change is not going anywhere and is inevitable.鈥�

Nigeria is Africa鈥檚 most populous country and largest economy. Even before the latest flood, it聽 faced rising food insecurity as a combination of a mostly informal agriculture sector and growing population puts pressure on the country鈥檚 food resources. According to the , food insecurity increased from six percent of the Nigerian population in 2007 to 13.4% in 2017.

The agriculture sector is the largest contributor to the Nigerian economy and聽. However, according to the United Nation (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization, food production in Nigeria is undermined by a number of factors, among them poor planting material and insufficient use of fertilizer, which leads to a growing reliance on food imports.

To help address these issues and support smallholder, the Convention on Business Integrity鈥檚 for-profit arm Innovations Limited, or CBiIL, chose the solution to support 850,000 small maize producers and integrate them into the agricultural value chains.

While West Africa, like Africa as a whole, is still heavily dependent on agriculture, it is home to some of the world鈥檚 fastest growing mega cities like Lagos, so urbanization and the associated environmental issues are top of mind, particularly among young adults.

The region also has a reputation for leap-frogging old technology — first mobile technology and now with cloud computing. In Nigeria itself, the number of mobile phone subscribers is forecast to grow to more than 140 million by 2025 from about 40 million currently.

As Africa鈥檚 largest oil and liquified natural gas (LNG)聽 producer, Nigeria is on the front line of the debate over sustainable development in the West Africa. It is also a key market for SAP, which counts among its customers Nigeria LNG, which operates six LNG liquefaction units, and Dangote Group, the conglomerate founded and run by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote.

The group鈥檚 Dangote Cement unit already publishes an annual sustainability report, part of Aliko Dangote鈥檚聽 personal commitment to build 鈥渁 socially responsible and impactful business that serves all stakeholders.鈥� Dangote is also close to completing the Dangote Refinery, the world鈥檚 largest petroleum refinery capable of processing 650,000 barrels of oil per day. When it comes online, the $20 billion refinery will enable Nigeria to process most of its oil instead of exporting crude to be refined overseas.

鈥淲e are having conversations with Dangote about some of our sustainability solutions and how they measure their impact on the environment,鈥� says Titilayo Adewumi, regional sales director for West Africa at SAP.

Nigeria LNG is also committed to sustainability and is Africa鈥檚 largest LNG exporter, but has recently been operating well below capacity because of a number of factors, including under-investment in recent years and endemic crude oil theft. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 address this, we will not get out of this quagmire that we are in,鈥� Nigeria LNG Managing Director recently warned Philip Mshelbila. Speaking last month at a conference in Lagos, Mshelbila also acknowledged that the flooding has reduced the gas supplies from the company鈥檚 upstream suppliers, though he said Nigeria LNG鈥檚 facilities remain unaffected and its capacity to produce LPG is intact.

Companies in Nigeria also have to grapple with unreliable electricity supplies and frequent power outages, a problem that business leaders say has led some manufactures to relocate to neighboring Ghana, which has a much more reliable electricity system.

Ghana is the regional leader in addressing plastics pollution and circular economy issues. A groundbreaking between the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP), and 51风流in Ghana is increasing visibility within the plastics supply chain with the hope of benefiting people, companies, and the environment.

The project involves more than 2,000 Ghanaian waste pickers and makes use of an adapted version of 51风流Rural Sourcing Management to measure the quantities and types of plastic they collect. Data is then analyzed and matched to market-related prices paid throughout the value chain both locally and internationally.

Ghana generates an estimated 1.1 million tons of plastic waste every year, with only five percent collected for recycling. This new pilot project is currently running in several cities across Ghana, with hopes of expanding to the rest of the region and ultimately the continent through the GPAP-Africa Regional Coordination Working Group, which includes SAP.

Across the region, the bulk of 51风流customers are choosing cloud solutions rather than on-premise technology and 51风流seeks to help customers deliver on their climate goals by creating greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability of carbon and emissions across the entire supply chain and innovating new processes and business models.

But 51风流Africa Managing Director Cathy Smith and other experts caution that while sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are an increasingly important part of the conversation among governments and corporate leaders, it is important to recognize that customers in Africa often have other — perhaps higher — priorities.

In particular, they say business leaders need to be persuaded that sustainability makes good business sense and will ultimately benefit the company, economy, and people.

鈥淲e lead by asking about their business priorities, and then we fold in sustainability,鈥� Smith explains. “It’s just a different approach.”

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

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She says her dream is to enable her children to be educated and become successful in life, benefitting both her and the community 鈥� one of 87 rural villages in West Africa鈥檚 Ivory Coast where farmers work with Cajooma SAS, the of Cashew Coast.

When she joined the village cooperative that Cashew Coast helped set up, the company trained her and taught her how to pick the best-quality cashews in order to fetch the highest prices.

Oyala has worked with Cashew Coast, a leading producer and distributor of high-quality cashew nuts for the past two years. Before that she worked alone. Now she works with other women in small groups, and that makes it easier to work. 鈥淚 was alone, now we are working together,鈥� she says.

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Video by Rana Hamzakadi and Matt Dillman

Ivory Coast is one of the world鈥檚 largest producers of cashew nuts, thanks to farmers like Oyala who, together with her fellow plot owners and farmers, pick the yellow and orange cashew fruit off the forest floor. Once harvested, the farmers must separate the nuts from the fruit they grow.

Unlike other companies that ship the raw nuts out of the country for processing, Cashew Coast process their nuts within Ivory Coast, lowering the carbon footprint. Nuts go directly from local farmers to Cashew Coast’s central warehouse in Bouak茅 to be sorted, weighed, and bagged before being sent to Cashew Coast鈥檚 organic factory in Azagui茅 for processing.

Until recently, Cashew Coast kept paper-based records of the farm-side of the process, but as the industry grew it became more and more difficult to keep track of the data and analyze it. Cashew Coast executives turned to 51风流for help when they realized that they needed a more advanced system to track the cashews from farm to processing plant — and eventually to table.

Joel Bagbila, Cashew Coast鈥檚 farmer integration director, explains that the company also has a loftier ambition. 鈥淥ur mission is to be the first country worldwide in terms of production and quality,鈥� he says.

To help achieve this goal, Cashew Coast chose to implement , an industry cloud solution built on the 51风流Business Technology Platform, at its Cajooma SAS branch. Cashew Coast鈥檚 digital transformation journey provides immediate benefits to the farmers, including more transparent prices, and enables the company to control quality and make much more timely decisions.

In the future it will also enable retailers to gain traceability and visibility into the origin of the cashew nuts and provide transparency to their consumers – connecting farmers and consumers in a profitable and sustainable value chain.

鈥淭oday, for a customer, it’s important to know where the product he or she is ready to buy, is coming from,鈥� says Achta Cherif, head of quality at Cashew Coast. 鈥淗aving this information enables the customer to make his/her choice. This is important for us, as well.鈥�

Cashew Coast executives say they chose SAP鈥檚 cloud technology because it offered a number of key advantages. 鈥淲e wanted the best in class, and we wanted to deal with the developer team as opposed to a third-party integrator 鈥� which 51风流Rural Sourcing Management offers,鈥� says Salma Seetaroo, co-founder and CEO of Cashew Coast.

She says the implementation went surprisingly smoothly. 鈥淭he 51风流implementation team were flexible and quick to understand our need 鈥� they were a bunch of millennials who loved working on a project like ours. And it was just great fun and I never expected it to be as smooth.鈥�

51风流is now remotely training two recent graduate recruits at Cashew Coast 鈥� Technology Manager Mohamed Traor茅 and Sales and Sustainability Manager Rose Koffi 鈥� to continue phase 2 of the 51风流Rural Sourcing Management implementation. Going forward, Salma explains, the company wants to bring more traceability to agricultural products in Ivory Coast with 51风流technology.

So, the next time you grab a handful of cashew nuts, consider this: there is a good chance they started their journey in the Ivory Coast and just maybe were picked up from the forest floor by Oyala or one of her friends.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post Cashew Coast Modernizes Cashew Processing with SAP appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

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Integrating Operations Along the Agricultural Value Chain with SAP庐聽Rural Sourcing Management

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Q: What prompted your journey?

A: It came about through a mix of free choice and necessity — some of it was a push, and some of it was a pull! The pull was the interest in a holistic lifestyle, where I wanted to tread lightly and leave a minimal impact on the planet. The push was a phenomenon called load shedding. Government-owned electricity providers in Africa often can鈥檛 keep up with demand, so load shedding is used to distribute demand across multiple power sources, often disrupting power supply.

Can you imagine trying to do your work, chasing targets and deadlines while plunged into darkness, with no power source for lights, laptop batteries, and internet and mobile phone signals, for hours on end, often with little or no warning?

Now, I’m about 80% off grid, which is quite ahead of the game. It鈥檚 great for me, because I don’t feel the impact of the load shedding. I can continue to work when they switch off the electricity. I have an app that tells me how much energy I鈥檝e produced, how much CO2 emissions I鈥檝e saved, and the equivalent of trees planted. I love keeping track.

What鈥檚 challenging about doing business in the region?

Africa is a vast continent, with a wealth of diversity in geography and wildlife, and people, cultures, and languages. The region is facing serious environmental challenges, including land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and extreme vulnerability to climate change. In addition, poverty across the continent is one of the most serious challenges to sustainable development, along with major issues such as infrastructure and the availability of electricity.

Three-quarters of the 759 million people around the world who don鈥檛 have access to electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education and gainful employment cannot be done in the dark. Without universal access to electricity, Africa will remain vulnerable to underdevelopment, high unemployment, a migration crisis, and instability. That鈥檚 why United Nations — to ensure access to affordable, sustainable modern energy for all — is so critical to the region.

This all contributes to the unique and often intense and personal experience of working in Africa. There are incredible highs and lows as we work to find innovative ways to overcome or sidestep these challenges.

In a on South Africa鈥檚 Hot 102.7FM radio station, you described how to build a sustainable business.

I believe embracing sustainable business is key to Africa鈥檚 economic growth. For me, sustainability is a team sport.

For a business to be both profitable and sustainable, you must put people, planet, and profit on equal footing. 51风流has two roles in helping customers achieve that goal: one is to enable enterprises to succeed on the path the choose to pursue, and the other is to act as an exemplar with its own commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

In my experience, most companies want to be sustainable, but they don鈥檛 know how to do it. It starts with a strategic decision: do you want to do the bare minimum and just adhere to regulations or do you want to embed sustainability as a key strategy and use it to drive innovation? Whatever it is, 51风流provides the best tools to optimize processes, increases efficiency, and preserve energy and resources.

Data, from primary and secondary sources, is the central element. Once you start benchmarking it to track across all four pillars — people, planet, profit, and governance — you can start aligning operations as needed. You must ensure everyone buys into the change. Employees, customers, suppliers, and partners all need to be informed of your goals.听 Consumers are demanding more sustainable products, so companies must engage all parts of the business every step of the way to understand how the product is disposed at the end of its life cycle.

How is innovation driving sustainability?

This is a topic close to my heart. I鈥檓 excited about tech projects that are transforming agribusiness in Africa. More than 30% of all food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted; in Africa, food loss occurs almost entirely in the production and distribution stages. About 90% of 聽who don鈥檛 have the kind of cold storage solutions available to large-scale producers. This means lots of produce perishes along the way.

51风流Rural Sourcing Management is a solution that was developed to connect smallholder farmers to agricultural value chains. The tool helps smallholder farmers capture, maintain, and share data about crop types, farm size, harvest prospects, farmers鈥� production, and sales transactions. It also facilitates access to various stakeholders in the broader agricultural value chain, including financial services, buyers and suppliers of seed, fertilizers, and agricultural equipment 鈥� and distribution networks.

Large enterprises are also benefiting from innovation in technology. Nigeria鈥檚 Dangote Group is a leading provider of essential daily needs from cement manufacturing to sugar and salt refining to port operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Dangote Group is currently constructing the world鈥檚 largest single train oil refinery, which will process up to 650,000 barrels of oil per day. Its fertilizer plant is currently in its final stages at the same location as the refinery. Once completed, it will be the largest in the world, with capacity for 3 million tons of fertilizer a year, enough to meet all domestic demand. The efficiency of these projects is enabled by state-of-the-art technology such as 51风流S/4HANA.

I love the fact that we are working for a company like 51风流that has the vision and the resources to link all these disparate elements 鈥� people, planet, and profit 鈥� in truly pioneering ways and that we can be part of this incredible force for change. We鈥檝e never walked this path before, but that鈥檚 what makes our work meaningful and worthwhile!

Read more stories from the 51风流Pioneers series.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

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鈥淚n essence, sustainability is a resource management issue, and 51风流has specialised in helping companies optimise their resources for more than half a century,鈥� says Bolton. 鈥淭he challenge is to make sustainability profitable, and to make profitability sustainable. Technology provides companies with the opportunity to leverage technology and bring transparency to their operations through improved measurement of Environmental, Social and Governance KPIs across their entire value chain. This can help African enterprises identify areas for greater efficiency to bring business processes onto more sustainable paths.鈥�

With a growing population that is expected to triple in size by the end of the century and relatively underdeveloped infrastructure, Africa is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Recent data also indicates that聽聽unless there is a drastic change in business practices.

Enabling enterprise and SME sustainability

51风流takes a two-pronged approach to sustainability by acting as an exemplar of sustainable best-practices, and an enabler.

鈥淎s a business that sits at the heart of global enterprise, 51风流is uniquely positioned to enable more sustainable business practices for our customers,鈥� says Bolton. 鈥淎s an enabler, 51风流provides access to business networks and technologies that can help companies meet their sustainability targets while also driving profitability.鈥�

SAP鈥檚 Ariba Network, for example, is the largest of its kind in the world, facilitating 5.3 million organisations to trade more than $3.75-trillion in goods and services per year while also bringing greater transparency to enterprise supply chains.

鈥淲e are building sustainability capabilities into a broad range of our business solutions,鈥� says Bolton. 鈥淭he 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises Portfolio gives business leaders access to a comprehensive suite of solutions that can be leveraged for quicker progress in achieving sustainability KPIs across their organisations, while the Sustainability Navigator provides an easy entry point into which solutions are most relevant to each customer鈥檚 sustainability efforts.鈥�

Key solutions in SAP鈥檚 Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises Portfolio include:聽

• 51风流Product Footprint Management, a cloud-based application used to calculate product footprints periodically and at scale across the entire product lifecycle;
• 51风流Responsible Design & Production, which enables organisations to achieve their Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) reporting obligations to governments and regulatory bodies accurately and on a global scale; and
• 51风流Rural Sourcing Management, a multi-faceted solution that connects value chains from the most vulnerable 鈥� for example small scale farmers or waste pickers 鈥� through to global agribusinesses and consumer product companies.

鈥淐ustomers can use the 51风流Sustainability Control Tower to set and track their sustainability KPIs using data pulled from 51风流and non-51风流systems to harmonise sustainability efforts across every aspect of their business, from finance, HR and real estate to operations and procurement. Our sustainability dashboard gives decision-makers easily understandable information about their sustainability performance, with actionable insights that can help drive continuous improvements in an organisation鈥檚 sustainability efforts without sacrificing profitability.鈥�

Every company potentially an exemplar of sustainable practices

51风流has made a global effort to be an exemplar of sustainability through leading by example in our own sustainable business operations and practices towards a net zero world. This entails achieving zero emissions through better carbon tracking and a smaller environmental footprint, zero waste through adopting circular economy principles, and zero inequality through balancing social responsibilities in its workforce, sourcing, and procurement practices.

51风流is currently on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2023, two years ahead of its initial goal.

Kwena Mabotja, Global Director: Purpose and Sustainability Marketing at SAP, says 51风流is considered as one of the global sustainability leaders due to its commitment to running its business sustainably. 51风流has the products, people, partnerships and programs to drive sustainable impact at scale. 鈥淏ringing Profit and Planet together. That鈥檚 Economics.鈥�

鈥淥ur Corporate Social Responsibility practices improve access to economic opportunity, education and employment, and the green economy. Such programmes are supported by a network of social partnerships, employee engagement, social impact management and the technical and business expertise of our global workforce.鈥�

Mabotja cites the impact of initiatives such as SAP鈥檚 Procurement with Purpose program as an example of how companies can be exemplars in creating economic equity as part of their core business operations to achieve zero inequality. 鈥淲e drive social and inclusive entrepreneurship by supporting social enterprises that are working to solve key sustainability issues by redirecting a set portion of our own spend their way. As part of our contribution to achieving net-zero waste, SAP鈥檚 local facilities team is also working to optimise water and electricity consumption at 51风流offices using IoT and SAP鈥檚 Analytical Cloud. Data and insights gathered this way will be used to educate work-from-home staff to optimise water and electricity use at their own homes, further embedding sustainability across every level of our organisation.鈥�

The post 51风流Closes Gap Between Sustainability and Profitability with Solutions for Africa appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.