Facilitating Sustainable Development in Africa

IFC’s efforts in Africa to integrate sustainability into its operations have broadened and accelerated by assisting clients to identify opportunities that add value to their operations and mitigate reputational and financial risks associated with social, environmental, and corporate governance issues.

In keeping with the priority given to frontier markets in IFC's strategic directions, the Corporation gives special attention to the sustainable development needs of the African region, taking advantage of new initiatives that promise to bring improved governance and economic development to the continent.

• Linkage Program
• IFC Against AIDS
• Sustainable Business Innovator

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Linkage Program
IFC's investments bring benefits to developing countries that go beyond financing: a transfer of skills and technology, increased employment and exports, good environmental, health, safety and corporate governance practices. Linkage programs are key tools in enhancing this overall development impact. Linkage work is designed around and IFC investment to increase local small businesses participation in the project and bring additional benefits to the surrounding communities.

The linkage programs focus on frontier countries and regions where few alternatives exist for local enterprises. Linkage projects are now an integral part of the Bank Group’s support to the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline and Mozal projects. IFC has also developed linkage programs to support smaller industrial projects, such as the Coca-Cola SABCO project in East and Southern Africa, and for suppliers of companies that do not receive direct IFC financing.
IFC Against AIDS
IFC also encourages sustainable development in Africa through the “IFC Against AIDS” initiative. HIV/AIDS has direct consequence for a company’s bottom line and a critical barrier to sustained economic growth – and nowhere more so than in Sub-Sahara Africa where infection rates are the highest in the world.

IFC Against HIV/AIDS was launched in 2000 to work with IFC clients to:

1. identify and analyze the risks that AIDS represents for their business, and
2. provide guidance to establishing programs of HIV/AIDS education, prevention and care for the workforce of those clients and/or neighboring communities.

Within Africa, IFC Against AIDS has provided guidance to a beverage company in Nigeria, a forestry company in South Africa, a microfinance bank in Kenya, and the Kenyan Railways company. Celtel, a cellular telephone company operating in 14 African countries, also received guidance from IFC to refine its HIV policy and develop an AIDS action plan, including anti-retroviral treatment for employees and dependents. The program has also provided customized tools to support HIV/AIDS workplace policies and community programs to a mining firm in Madagascar, a tea company in Kenya, and a cotton producer in Zambia.

Elsewhere in Africa, Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company operating in Angola, earmarked $1 million of a $280 million loan secured from IFC in 2002 to efforts to fight AIDS. To address the special challenges small and medium enterprises face, IFC Against AIDS has also launched a training program for African SMEs, which has taken place already in Kenya and South Africa. Learn more about IFC Against AIDS>>

Sustainable Business Innovator
To promote innovation on sustainability, IFC has put together a team with a threefold focus: to incubate innovative business initiatives that deliver environmental and social benefits, to demonstrate their commercial attractiveness, and to encourage their independent replication in the private sector in emerging markets. Learn more about Sustainable Business Innovator>>