Kenya: ''Ensure healthy social responsibility''

Source from:  The Punch 01/05/2015

A Director of British American Tobacco in Kenya, Mrs. Carol Musyoka, has said corporate social responsibility has the potential of breeding a culture of dependency among its beneficiaries.

Speaking in Lagos at the 2014 edition of an annual lecture, titled ‘Creating competitive advantage through corporate social responsibility: Lessons from East Africa,' organised by a Lagos-based law firm, Hybrid Solicitors and Consults, she advised corporate entities to embark on CSR with emphasis on projects that would create financial independence.

Musyoka stated that though a certain Kenya community ravaged by HIV/AIDS had the highest number of non-governmental organisations per square kilometre in the country, which were providing assistance, the people had started to abuse it.

"In that particular part of Kenya, they don't till the land. They often ask, 'Why should we till the land when there is an NGO that will come and help us do it?' So the NGOs have destroyed the community in that area," she said.

Similarly, the Managing Partner of Hybrid Solicitors, Mr. Bimbo Atilola, who was one of the speakers at the event, noted that CSR is good and that any corporate entity which ignores it is short-changing itself.

He added that a company that chooses to be irresponsible to the society in which it operates would experience a significant amount of negative effects.

The occasion, which was chaired by a former Dean of the Faculty of Law, Lagos State University, Prof. Momoh Abdulrazaq, was also attended by the incumbent Dean, Prof. Tokunbo Obadina, among others. Enditem