At Lekela we are committed to improving the lives of people and the environment, and acting with integrity is the backbone of how we go about achieving that. As set out in our 2021 Sustainability Report, this means holding ourselves and our partners to the highest standards and embedding these standards across our systems, processes and procedures.
Our ESG activities all aim to have a real-world impact on the communities where we operate. Whether it’s building a new market in Taiba N’Diaye in partnership with the local Women’s Association or establishing a protected environmental zone near our Kangnas Wind Farm to support biodiversity, we need to know the effects of these projects on the local community and environment to guide good long-term decision-making.
That is why all ESG activities are overseen by both our executive board and our ESG committee, not only to ensure that Lekela is delivering as much value through these projects as possible, but to ensure leadership and accountability on ESG matters right from the very top of the organisation.
But our commitment to integrity does not stop with the board and our ESG committee – it is embedded in our business, our values and reinforced through regular training of our people and partners.
In 2019, Lekela also set up a dedicated Diversity and Inclusion working group to seek ways to improve our understanding and efforts as an organisation and continue to foster an inclusive, fair and enjoyable working environment for all our colleagues.
In the past year we continued with our gender assessment efforts to ensure our actions match our ambition of achieving equity through women’s empowerment. We’re pleased to see that our gender representation is outperforming the wider renewables industry, including at the senior management and Board level, and that over half of the participants in our community investment programmes were women.
Not only have we set out our own standards, but we work with internationally recognised organisations to develop them. The UN Guiding Principle on Business and Human Rights, the IFC Performance Standards, the International Labour Organization Core Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all inform Lekela’s ethical standards and codes.
Our work with external and internal groups helps ensure that Lekela continues to follow best practice, and that we’re well placed to deliver on our goal of delivering renewable energy, in a sustainable way that benefits all. This depends on conducting ourselves with integrity, which we see as the foundation on which we build our business.