ADESOLA Adeduntan, managing director, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, has said the bank’s sustainability drive through collaboration with the Lagos Business School, LBS, has yielded knowledge creation, dissemination and application on diverse initiatives.

Speaking at the Firstbank CEO Forum in Lagos, he said the bank’s Sustainability Centre has empowered 3,000 Small and Medium Enterprise owners through its capacity building programmes and has published over 10 research materials and case studies. He stressed that the bank recognised the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, and has focused on human development and empowerment schemes using financial inclusion.

“Financial inclusion goes beyond improving individual lives through cash payments to digital social payments such as digital social transfers and government payable wages capable of providing access to millions of adults in emerging economies through the formal financial system.

“These examples demonstrate how financial inclusion serves as an enabler to achieving SDG goals of eliminating extreme poverty, reducing hunger and promoting food security and fostering quality education. Having access to bank accounts reflects the choice that people make: women use proceeds from their businesses to invest in their households, families take care of education needs from savings and remittances from abroad.”

Chris Ogbechie of the LBS said the institution would ensure that business leaders were not raised solely for profit maximisation, but also that they were ingrained with the drive to make lasting positive impact on the society. For him, sustainability is transforming the competitive landscape and will force companies to change the way they think about products, technology, processes and even business models.

—  Apr 3, 2017 @ 01:00 GMT

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