CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY, HEINEKEN IN AFRIC
NOVEMBER 2005
Heineken's African investment goes back to
1923, when the company bought a Belgian-
owned brewery in what is now the Democratic
Republic of Congo. The company now has a
presence in ten African countries; in many of
these it is among the most significant
employers and taxpayers. In addition to
ensuring fair and equitable employment and
training practices throughout the global
company, including Africa, the company has
also instituted a number of programmes that
relate more specifically to the continent.
One of these is a programme to increasingly
use sorghum, a crop that grows much more
easily in the harsher conditions of Africa, as
adjunct in the brewing process. Chef de
Brasserie Arnand Chaurasia of the Bralirwa
brewery in Gisenyi, Rwanda, says that much of
the basic local raw material that goes into the
beer brewed there comes from sorghum
programmes that Heineken has helped to
develop in the country. Farmers are helped to
refine the quality of their product through seed
selection programmes, and they also enjoy a
guaranteed price for their crops.
Other CSR programmes run by Fleineken in
Africa include helping local suppliers, improving
distribution methods, supporting local retailers
and developing environmentally responsible
techniques for the use and treatment of water.
The company also provides education and
training for staff, medical clinics for staff and
their family, and transport for workers where
the public transport systems are lacking.
"The programmes are part of an approach
that communicates Heineken corporate policy
by cascading information down through all
levels," said Victor Famuyibo, Heineken's CSR
project manager for Africa. A Nigerian,
Famuyibo worked for sixteen years at
Heineken's operating company in Lagos before
moving to the company headquarters a few
years ago.
Today he was attending a training course at
the Bralirwa brewery in Gisenyi, Rwanda to take
part in a special programme on the company's
code of business conduct for mid-level
managers and foremen. The programme that
day covered five main issues: responsible
policies on the sale and use of alcohol,
corruption, conflicts of interest, gifts and fraud.
All of these are part of the Heineken's global
code of conduct, but they have to be
translated and conveyed in the appropriate
ways, he said. "It's a lot of effort. In Rwanda,
for instance, people may work in English, or
French, or a local language. So ideas have to
be translated and communicated using the
right language at the appropriate level.'
A person from a gift-giving culture might
find it hard to understand that gifts in the
business environment can be interpreted as a
form of corruption, for instance. But the effort
was worth it, he said, and not only because the
programme helps to ensure that everyone
knows the rules of the game.
It is also a 'feedback loop', by which the
company ensures that it is open to ideas. He
was still laughing because during the training
programme that day one of the trainees, Denis
Gasigwa, a cellar foreman, had asked why a
brewery was worrying about an 'alcohol policy'.
"We make beer, so surely it should be a beer
policy?" the man had said in Kinyarwanda.
"This shows the thoughtfulness you can find at
every level," said Famuyibo. "The funny thing is
that we were debating the very same thing last
week, during a meeting in Amsterdam."
estimated 3.5% in 2003, according to the South Africa-based Institute for
Strategic Studies (ISS). This has made Rwanda one of the fastest-growing
economies in Africa, and indeed, the world. The government's economic
reforms, part of an aid-funding package negotiated with the International
Monetary Fund, are based on liberalising trade barriers, already decreased
from 17.5% in 1998 to 11% in 2002, privatising the country's 74 parastatals,
or large state-owned enterprises, and attracting foreign investment, the ISS
says.
At the Bar Lounge Republika, decorated in a burnt-sienna theme and
with a view over one of the city's valleys, they play a range of music from
Cuba to the Congo. You can get both the country's staple beers there,
Primus and Miitzig, of course, but they can offer draught now too. Cool
young civil servants or business executives patronise the place, as well as
expatriate aid workers and even the occasional government minister. It has
all the coolness of a trendy bar in a recovering country.
The draught beer is there as part of a pilot programme being run by a
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