One Goal Alliance: Company CEOs commit to scale up impact of UN Sustainable Dev’t Goals.

This was during the first steering committee meeting of One Goal Alliance, which took place at the headquarters of MTN Cameroon in Douala.

It should be recalled that the One Goal Alliance initiative was presented and launched on Monday March 18, 2024, in Douala. 

MTN Cameroon brought together seven other companies including Chanas Assurances, Dangote Cement Cameroon SA, Huawei Cameroon, IHS Towers Cameroon, MWDDB Cameroon and UBA Cameroon in a coalition dedicated to making a meaningful difference in certain crucial areas with specific focus on quality education, economic empowerment and environmental protection.

To achieve the vision, members of the alliance committed to organise joint Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, initiatives focusing on the most affected regions of Cameroon.

The first steering committee meeting, according to the Managing Director at MWDDB Cameroon, Henriet Muchu, was to approve the first project that they will start implementing.

"We have three very diverse enduring high impact programmes. We have one on the restoring and protection of the mangrove, we have one on education and it a project about bringing back reading into schools,” she said. 

“We all know the impact of reading right from our early childhood through ones’ educational career. The third programme is about good governance and ethics, trying to build a culture of good governance and ethics right from children which are the future of the country," Muchu noted.  

The selected projects, she said, are keys to the challenges facing humanity as a whole and which mankind has committed to solve due to survival dependency. 

"If you look at our environment, bringing down the carbon footprints is our guidance to sustainable development. So, our projects are chosen based on the needs of the society. I think we will all agree that good governance is such a key to everything, a key to our present and to our future. In terms of education, when you look at our country, Cameroon, 70% of our population is under 20 years old. So, education is key also, as such these our projects are selected with these guidelines in mind," she added. 

Creating a greater impact by working together

Speaking at the sideline of the meeting, Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of MTN Cameroon, Mitwa Ng’ambi, emphasised that over the years, they have been working single-handedly to carry out their Corporate Social Responsibility. 

She said they have come to realise that if they work together with other partners, they will create a greater impact. She said this is why MTN Cameroon brought in other companies in the move to improve on the living standards of people.

She went in to appreciate the commitment from all the members as well as an official of United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, who contributed developmental expertise in that regard. 

As a member of the One Goal Alliance, the MTN CEO truly believes that everybody deserves to benefit more than just a connected life. 

"So, as MTN while we bring our technology and infrastructure expertise, we also bring our desire for community development. As you know, MTN has an arm of the organisation called MTN Foundation that has been running quite a number of projects across the areas of education, entrepreneurship, women empowerment, youth empowerment, health...As our priority, we expect that with the resources of the MTN Foundation and also MTN we will to put some of these resources into the One Goal Alliance," she said. 

The three projects that have agreed have an implementation phase of 18 months. 

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3186 of Thursday August 01, 2024