… goodness and kindness have always been in the Bank’s DNA-GCEO
“Sports is one of the gateways to Africa and conversely one of Africa’s gateways to the world, hence, the annual Access Bank Lagos City Marathon connects with our strategic objectives to make the continent more attractive to global investors and trade partners.”
That foregoing statement was made by the ebullient Dr (Mrs) Ajoritsedere Awosika , MFR , the Chairman of Africa’s largest retail bank ,Access Bank Plc, explaining the concept and objective behind the Access Bank Lagos City Marathon, sponsored by the Bank. Speaking on the Bank’s long-term plan in relation to the marathon and sports, in general, Awosika stated that Access Bank is going global with its efforts and that the Bank’s team has been given a target of about five years to achieve this goal. She said that the Bank is looking at getting beyond today, adding that “it’s already in our strategic plan.”
The Access Bank Lagos City Marathon has been running for just eight years, yet it has already earned the Gold title from World Athletics, the organisation that oversees international athletics. One of the largest sports and lifestyle events in Africa, with exponential growth in participation and rewards, the event draws elite athletes from Africa and around the world as well as fitness and lifestyle aficionados to Lagos, Africa’s commercial and cultural capital every year.
The eight-year-old marathon is one of the business verticals of Access Bank Group, aims to promote tourism, healthy living, and the exposure of Nigerians and other Africans to opportunities on a global scale in the fields of sports, culture, tourism, and other industries. Over 75 elite international athletes competed for the $370,000 total prize money at the 2023 Marathon which drew over 50,000 participants. It has since evolved into a high-octane lifestyle and cultural occasion that offers Africans limitless opportunities to push the boundaries of leadership, excellence, and innovation.
While commenting on the marathon’s milestone, the highly-elated Awosika said: “As you know, sport unites Africa. We are succeeding in our corporate social responsibility goal of raising Africans’ awareness of their wellbeing and improving their quality of life thanks to the substantial number of participants from all over the continent.” “At Access Bank, we collaborate with the government to support sports & cultural development in Africa ”
It is not only on sports that the Bank focuses on in its CSR initiatives but also on virtually all issues that impact positively on humanity . In spite of the excruciating business environment that has prevailed in the country over the years, the Access Bank Corporation has remained committed to these social engagement initiatives. The group has remained undeterred in its efforts to impact ,positively , immediate business environments despite the prevailing harsh business environment. Some two year ago alone, reports show that Access Bank invested over N12.25 billion in various CSR efforts, working with 43 NGOs across 194 communities and impacting 28, 540, 046 lives. Through its Employee Volunteering Scheme, the Bank’s workers devoted over 2, 781, 443 hours of their time, talents/resources in over 514 strategic community initiatives across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
In addition, the Bank gave out N3 billion cash to various organisations, NGOs and even state governments for one form of relief or another. The bank was also a major contributor to the CACOVID initiative in which players in the nation’s private sector donated food items worth N30 billion as palliatives to Nigerians during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.
‘’Through CACOVID, we reached 10 million Nigerian homes. And you ask yourself what if we didn’t do it. Perhaps, we would have lost more people,” said the Group Managing Director /CEO of the Bank, Herbert Wigwe . He recalled that goodness and kindness have always been in the Bank’s DNA, saying “ Even when we were a small Bank about 20 years ago, we launched and funded a project called Gift to Africa in which Access Bank made millions of naira worth of contributions to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We were so actively involved in fighting HIV/AIDS early on that some people even thought that we had the disease.’’
Just last year, as part of the effort to improve the state of education in Nigeria, Access Bank raised $1.7 million at its Charity Polo Tournament held at The Guards Polo Club, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom on Saturday, 16 July 2022. The money, the Bank confirmed , would be (or has been) directed towards the building and equipping of over 100 classroom blocks in the less developed areas of Nigeria.
These donations, according to Wigwe, “Serve as building blocks towards achieving a brighter future for the country, while challenging the various state governments to take sustainable actions towards ensuring all boys and girls complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education.”
“We thank all attendees and donors for buying into our vision and assure that Access Bank will not relent in its efforts to see that every Nigerian child regardless of tribe, gender and religion is given a fair chance for a better tomorrow.
Managing Director of Access Bank, Roosevelt Ogbonna also added that, the polo event remained the greatest investment towards ensuring a great future for the vulnerable Nigerian child.
The Polo tournament, which is executed in partnership with Fifth Chukker and UNICEF, in Kaduna, South Africa and the UK has been an extension of Access Bank’s efforts to support anti-poverty and anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns in Nigeria. This is the first edition of the UK-based tournament to be held since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
Education, Health and Entrepreneurship have been discovered to be important elements necessary for true sustainable development in a society, and it is on this premise that the Corporate Communications Group based its CSR project tagged “The Take Tomorrow Initiative”. This project adopts a 3-pronged approach with interventions in the areas of Education, Health and Entrepreneurship.
In the area of Health, the Bank, in June 2016, partnered with two non-governmental organisations: Hacey Health Initiative and Asha Initiative in sensitizing Dakece Community on Vesicovaginal Fistula (VVF) by engaging community stakeholders on the importance of accessing antenatal care at registered clinics and delivering babies with the help of skilled midwives, as a means to completely eradicate VVF. Attended by over 200 members of the community, the programme was successful at establishing focus groups in the community, comprising of men, women and a community leader for continued discussions on the prevalent VVF causes and preventions.
In the area of entrepreneurship, the Group partnered with Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN) for the selection of schools to train in line with the JA training module. The 20 week long entrepreneurial training session involved mentoring of the students until they were able to birth their business ideas and execute them for profit maximization.
Members of the group were distributed into 6 teams covering 6 schools to share their knowledge, expertise and experience on entrepreneurship by volunteering 2 hours of their time in a week to train the JA students. Currently, the initiative is impacting over 200 students with business education and entrepreneurial skills, empowering them for a productive future.
Going by its track records in Corporate Social Responsibility and philanthropy, Access Bank was ranked as the overall best company in Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Nigeria for the year 2019 as published in Forbes Africa. The ranking was based on a result drawn from impact assessments of 910 organisations operating in Nigeria over the last 13 years. According to the report, the ranking took into cognizance Access Bank’s participation in impactful national projects, its recognitions, and ratings from international award bodies, investment in CSR and sustainability in the period under review.
Reacting to the ranking, the Head, Sustainability, Access Bank Plc., Omobolanle Victor-Laniyan said, “Access Bank has a corporate strategy and philosophy which places sustainability at its core. We ensure that our projects and initiatives are impactful and strategically linked with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals”.
“Over the years we have recorded outstanding results by undertaking several initiatives across the country, and we are deeply honoured to be recognized as the overall best company in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability,” Victor-Laniyan added.
Beyond banking, Access Bank thinks sustainability. This is how the Bank describes its philosophy: “Our values underpin this strategic approach to sustainability and reflect our desire to preserve the future for all our stakeholders. Corporate governance and ethical behaviour form the baseline of all we do. Our corporate responsibility practice encompasses employment standards, customer satisfaction and relations, product and services supplier relations and environmental sustainability.
“We understand the basic challenges faced by various communities where we have an impact and we are positioned to contribute our quota in adding value to the communities where we operate, enhancing their lives and leaving them better equipped to succeed themselves.”
This include making sure that communities in which it carries out its business are impacted positively. Sustainable development is an organising principle that aims to meet human development goals while also enabling natural systems to provide necessary natural resources and ecosystem services to humans. The desired result is a society where living conditions and resources meet human needs without undermining the planetary integrity and stability of the natural system.
Over the years Access Bank’s sustainability goals have bordered on several organisational policies including CSR. The idea of CSR was set into motion to integrate social and environmental goals into a company’s business. This is based on the fact that CSR drives for loyalty with customers, engagement with employees and positive public attention which is in tune with the sustainability goals of Access Bank. Our CSR initiatives include social innovations like the “W” initiative, financial innovations such as the Green bond and environmental campaigns like the Zero waste campaign. One of the key forces driving the phenomenal growth of Access Bank plc is its belief in adding values to its immediate business environment.
Access Bank is among the five top-tier Nigerian banks referred to as FUGAZ.With more than 50 million customers, the Bank is the largest bank in Africa by customer base, and the largest bank in Nigeria by asset. As of September 2021, in addition to Nigeria, Access Bank plc has subsidiaries in Mozambique, Zambia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and in the United Kingdom. It also maintains representative offices in China, India, Lebanon and United Arab Emirates.
In early 2021, Access Bank announced that it had identified eight new African countries for potential expansion, seeking to benefit from a continent-wide free trade agreement. The target markets are Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Angola, Namibia and Ethiopia, which would extend the international presence of the bank to 18 countries. Access Bank is expected to establish offices (or has since done so) in some countries and in others, should partner with existing banks and leverage its digital platforms to provide services to clients.
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