Sterling One Foundation has expressed appreciation to partners who supported them in making the 2023 edition of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS) a huge success.
Mrs Olapeju Ibekwe, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the foundation, said at an event to honour the partners in Lagos that the foundation treasures their partnership.
Ibekwe said that ASIS is a collaborative platform which brings in different stakeholders across the development ecosystem to accelerate impact investment into critical sectors towards the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Tonight, we are appreciating the partners of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS) for 2023 from the public sector, the private sector and the international development community.
“Today, we are here to appreciate them as we look forward to the convening happening in July 25-26, 2024, at the Eko Convention Centre under the theme: “Re-imagining Progress: A New Blueprint for Sustainable Development in Africa.”
Ibekwe said that the foundation is happy to welcome new partners to the 2024 ASIS.
“And we are working with our partners and also welcoming new partners that deemed it fit to collaborate with us; they have to realise that silo execution is not reliable and so we have to do it together,” Ibekwe said.
The CEO said that the Africa Social Impact Summit is not just an event, but an execution platform where we have a collaborative framework on how we go up together, we execute together, and the initiative is prioritised together.
“It is definitely not just an event; we are convening to drop new idea, inspire new project and to scale existing fantastic project.
“In 2024, ASIS is going into execution mode, it is about implementation, about speedy efficient execution of projects,” Ibekwe said.
One of the partners, Coca Cola, said that the ASIS platform has been fantastic because it has been a platform where partners come together to deliberate on issues to move the African continent forward.
Amaka Onyemelukwe, Director, Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability for the Coca Cola Company, noted that the NGOs and the civil society organisations have been integral in influencing most of the programmes at the grass roots level in their advocacy and campaigns.
She said that Coca Cola has remained committed to making a difference and refreshing the world, adding that, in doing all these, the company has been galvanising partners all over the world.
She stressed that circularity is a big one for Coca Cola whether in terms of water use ratio, etc. and issues around plastic waste where the company has seen improved activities in recycling activities.
She said that 2024 is going to be a game changer for Coca cola as the government is taking decisive actions on the use of single use plastics and also the buying in into the fact of plastics being a resource and a raw material for other industries.
“We want to raise the bar and make people to be conscious of this important resource in plastic.
“It is a powerful empowerment tool for everyone who actually collected and recycle this plastic, so we want to raise the bar to make people to be more aware of this important resource so that we can actually use it to better the society,” Onyemelukwe said.
For Eric Monchu Intong, Regional COO, Head of Mission for Anglophone West Africa for AFREXIM Bank, the mandate of the bank is to promote and facilitate Intra and Extra African Trade among African countries and the rest of the world.
Intong said that AFREXIM Bank is also expected to complement what the commercial banks are doing.
He said that Sterling Bank is a critical partner to AFREXIM Bank, noting that ASIS is an initiative of the bank and because it aims at empowering and facilitating trade, “we have our visions aligned, that is why over the years we have been a partner because Sterling has been promoting trade not just within Africa but with the rest of the world.”
“Because intra African trade is an arrowhead of our strategic plan, we think that ASIS is an initiative that we must continue to support because it shows our oneness and unism,” Intong said.
The Chairman, Board of Directors of Sterling One Foundation, Mr Sulaiman Abubakar, noted that one of the objectives of the bank for ASIS is to bring people together.
Abubakar said that, as a bank, “we see a lot of people coming to us to solve the same problem over and over again”.
“Sowe allow them to sit down and see what they might not be seeing and to that extent we see that the summit has turned out to be the most important thing we have done,” Abubakar said.
