March 8, Accra – International Women’s Day highlights the private sector’s crucial role in advancing the economic inclusion of women in Africa.

At Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), we use our industry leadership to be part of the solution for positive change on the African continent. Our aim is to create greater shared opportunity for the business and the communities we serve across the value chain.

We understand that our business can only thrive when the communities we serve thrive too. This is why we have made economic inclusion of women one of the pillars of our sustainability strategy at CCBA.

Across our value chain, we are working to improve skills and business knowledge for women, which in turn can help give them access to more opportunities.

For example, in Tanzania we have an economic inclusion programme called Mwanamke Shujaa (“A Brave Woman”), which provides training and mentorship to woman food vendors, as well as tools of the trade to enable them to grow their businesses. Training covered key areas like bookkeeping, customer care, stress management and capital growth.

In Ethiopia, female engineering students have joined our “Women in Engineering” trainee programme which will give them development opportunities and exposure to the company’s world-class operations, setting them up for future employment.

Through our partnership in Ghana with Girls in Science and Technology (GIST, CCBA subsidiary Voltic aims to reach women at different levels of education, providing them with the mentorship and coaching they need for a successful and impactful Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) career.

In South Africa, we have established a bursary fund at the University of Pretoria to support female students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds in their final year of engineering studies.

In Mozambique, a group of  women plastic waste collectors completed a 12-week training course in an economic inclusion programme supported by CCBA. These women have since educated their communities about the positive effects of recycling.

We will continue to focus on creating a better shared future, to grow and sustain small businesses and enhance livelihoods, resulting in increased economic value and business capability for women, communities and our business system.

We believe this holistic approach, within and outside our organization, drawing on the ability of everyone to inspire inclusion, is a powerful formula for change.

Staff from Voltic (GH) Limited, members of the University of Ghana Plastic Recycling Project and the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly team joined forces to collect PET bottles for disposal by Beach Cleanup Ghana – a cleantech organisation that uses smart technology to help restore cleanliness to beaches in Ghana.

The cleanup was the second this year involving the same partners in a bid to remove plastic waste affecting the beach and lagoon.

“The interconnected global challenges of packaging waste and climate change have made this a focus for our business and communities. The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners are taking a hard look at the packaging we use and how we can drive change,” said Worlasi Seddoh Bedu Mensah, Public Affairs, Communication and Sustainability Manager at Voltic (GH) Limited, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa.

“Our sustainable packaging strategy aims to create systemic change through a circular economy for our packaging – from how bottles are designed and manufactured, to how they’re recycled and reused.

“We have a responsibility to help solve the global plastic waste crisis, and we’re leveraging our scale and reach across markets to achieve our sustainability goals and reduce waste pollution.

“We can’t do it alone. We work with stakeholders, nonprofits, communities, governments and our industry toward a clean environment,” said Mensah.

“We are working in our communities to educate people on why and how to recycle through collection campaigns, on-package messaging and more to create a more sustainable environment for all.

“Tackling the global plastic waste crisis requires cross-sector collaboration and alignment on common principles and targets.

“We work with a range of stakeholders at a regional and local level. This includes partnering with governments and community organisations to strengthen recycling infrastructure and boost collection rates, collaborating with customers, peers and industry associations to shape public policy that supports a circular economy; and teaming up with suppliers, startups and R&D partners to fuel sustainable packaging innovation,” Mensah said.

ENDS

“As a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, we are leading the industry in making our value chain increasingly sustainable in the way that we manufacture our products, how we distribute them and how we sell them,” said Public Affairs, Communication and Sustainability Director, Worlasi Mensah.

“We have the scale and reach to make a real difference, and we’re using our leadership position to drive change and help put our planet on a more sustainable path.

“Our goal is to collect and recycle the equivalent of 100% of the packaging we sell, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging strategy in 2018 called World Without Waste.

“We can’t do it alone. We work with stakeholders, nonprofits, communities, governments and our industry toward a clean environment,” said Mensah.

“Tackling the global plastic waste crisis requires cross-sector collaboration and alignment on common principles and targets. We work with a range of stakeholders at a regional and local level.

“This includes partnering with governments and community organisations to strengthen recycling infrastructure and boost collection rates, collaborating with customers, peers and industry associations to shape public policy that supports a circular economy; and teaming up with suppliers, startups and R&D partners to fuel sustainable packaging innovation.

“We’re working toward these solutions to create a circular economy that benefits society and works for our business. We’ve set ambitious goals for our business, to take responsibility for our packaging across its lifecycle and reduce ocean pollution,” said Mensah.

ENDS

Plastic waste is a growing problem globally, with up to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entering the oceans each year¹. Plastic packaging is also an essential part of our modern lives, supporting efficient, safe and hygienic food value chains, among other important applications.

On a continent where food safety is an abiding concern, this means plastic packaging will continue to have a role for some time to come, and the focus must be on eliminating plastic waste.

Creating a viable circular economy for plastic waste is a key strategy to address this problem.

The circular economy promotes the re-use and recycling of products and materials, creating a closed-loop system that minimises waste and pollution. The circular economy offers a unique opportunity to address post-consumer plastic waste in Africa by keeping plastics in use and out of the environment.

Africa also has an unusually large informal economy, with the International Labour Organisation estimating in 2018 that 85.8 percent of employment on the continent is informal.²

This includes a vast network of waste pickers who collect and sort recyclable materials, creating a key component of a circular economy for plastic waste that both generates employment and reduces plastic pollution.

Integrating waste pickers into the formal waste management system, by providing training, equipment and a reliable income, can improve their working conditions and increase economic opportunities for marginalised communities.

At the same time, by reducing waste and increasing resource efficiency, the circular economy can reduce the reliance on virgin resources and create a more sustainable future for all.

This requires a significant investment in infrastructure, technology, and education. Governments, businesses, and civil society must work together to create an enabling environment for the circular economy to thrive.

This includes policies that incentivise the use of recyclable materials, regulations that require producers to take responsibility for their products’ end-of-life, and public education campaigns that raise awareness about the benefits of the circular economy.

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) has made a commitment to invest in our planet and our packaging, to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past, working in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company which launched a sustainable packaging initiative called World Without Waste in 2018.

We are rethinking how our bottles are designed, collected, recycled and repurposed as part of our World Without Waste vision, with the following global goals:

• Help collect a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030
• Focus on making all our packaging 100% recyclable by 2025
• Make 25% of our packaging reusable by 2030

We recognise the importance of supporting the total collection value chain from waste picker level, to buy back centres and recyclers.

Understanding that we can’t do this alone, we partner with like-minded bodies to shape policy and leverage our combined scale.

Poor waste disposal is everybody’s problem, so everybody needs to get involved.

One of the most valuable environmental interventions in addressing poor waste disposal and achieving circularity is setting up the right Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanisms and policies.

In the EPR model, producers pay fees to a producer responsibility organisation, or PRO, such as PETCO.

By creating value for post-consumer waste in this way, waste collectors or municipalities are incentivised to gather and return it to buy-back centres, who then deliver it to the recyclers.

So far, through effective industry partnerships, we have implemented voluntary EPR models in four of our markets and helped create organisations like PETCO South Africa, in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania, and soon to be established in Uganda as well.

The model has been extremely successful since PETCO was established in South Africa, growing from collection and recycling of 9,000 tonnes of PET in 2005 to more than 92,000 tonnes in 2021, and an average price paid of around 50c/kg of PET in 2005 to around R3.80/kg in 2021, showing an increase in both volume and value.

Going a step further, the South African government adopted mandatory EPR regulations in 2021, creating a precedent that other African countries can consider and adopt too.

Building on these successes, CCBA has engaged with SADC, NEPAD and other regional organisations to roll out the self-regulated EPR model in other markets.

We are also improving the recyclability of our packs through a strong emphasis on shifting to homogeneous and clear bottles and have made significant progress on this already.

To clean up existing packaging, we’re bringing people together through programmes like beach and river cleanups and other ongoing local activities. To encourage more people to recycle more often, we’re investing to help people understand what to recycle, how to recycle, and where to recycle.

The opportunity to grow employment in Africa through a circular economy for plastic waste is clear. In Mozambique alone, a total of 37,000 people benefit from collection and recycling activity that is supported by CCBA.

Scaling up the EPR model across the continent will go a long way towards addressing unemployment and poverty, while also removing plastic waste from the environment.

1. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1260352
2. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf

“In an age of increasing digitalization, climate change concerns and health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the critical importance of scientific and technological capacity is more evident than ever,” according to a World Bank article on the subject.

“Individuals with advanced skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are crucial to push us to new frontiers as well as tackle urgent challenges. However, the potential of one group has been consistently under-harnessed in this regard: women.”

The authors say only 30% of science professionals in sub-Saharan Africa are women. Research has shown several factors contributing to the underrepresentation of women in STEM – negative stereotypes about girls’ and women’s capability in STEM fields, discrimination against women in the classroom and workplace and traditional gender roles that place the burden of domestic responsibilities disproportionately on the shoulders of women, leaving them less time to work in labs, attend conferences and build networks.

Removing these barriers is an essential step towards closing the gender gap and giving women an equal chance at succeeding in STEM.

CCBA’s Managing Director of Voltic (GH) Ltd, Flora Jika, said CCBA was committed to playing its part in promoting the advancement of women in the sciences.

“Because women are integral to our continent’s shared success, we seek to empower women and girls throughout our markets on the continent,” Jika said.

“Our aim is to create greater shared opportunity for the business and the communities we serve across the value-chain. Opportunity is more than just money, it’s about a better future for people and their communities everywhere on the African continent.”

In Ghana, Voltic (GH) Limited has partnered with the Girls Excellence Movement (GEM) to increase impact in the lives of women and children in the communities where it operates. GEM is a team of dynamic Ghanaian, Nigerian, Tanzanian, American and British young professional volunteers who devote their skills, time, and other resources to delivering carefully curated capacity building programmes for girls.

GEM’s vision is to inspire, educate, mentor, and inform girls to help them become change leaders. It develops girls into excellent, independent, confident, well informed, and fearless women who are able and willing to take on leadership in all spheres of life, particularly careers in the STEM fields.

Under the partnership, GEM and Voltic organized their first Inspiration-On-Wheels outreach to Comboni Technical Vocational Institute (COMBOTECH) at Sogakope in the Volta Region of Ghana in 2022.

Discussions during the session covered various topics, including menstrual health and their rights online, STEM subjects and careers, sexual assault awareness and how to effectively engage with the team of mentors. The girls were also given free sanitary pads and mathematical sets.

Voltic has also partnered with the non-profit organization Girls in Science and Technology (GIST).

GIST’s mission aligns with Voltic’s passion for women and youth empowerment, providing them with the mentorship and coaching they need for a successful and impactful STEM career, and exposing them to opportunities in the STEM industry.

Voltic supports GIST with internship opportunities for female STEM students who fit in the company’s operations. Voltic also partners with GIST to organize empowerment campaign programmes for girls in secondary and tertiary institutions in Ghana.

In 2022, GIST also launched the GIST-UMaT Chapter in Takoradi. The aim was to promote the participation of young females in STEM, to increase their interest in the career opportunities available to them. This chapter seeks to create a community where the girls have blueprint role models to look up to. It will also expose them to internship opportunities to give them the head start they need for a successful STEM career.

Referring to the successes of CCBA’s women empowerment programmes, Jika said: “By investing in women’s economic empowerment, we have created shared value in hopes of a better shared future – enabling improved livelihoods for women, their families, and their communities, while inclusively expanding our business.

“Our aim is to boost income, provide decent earning potential and improve skills and business knowledge for women, resulting in them accessing other opportunities.”

Voltic (GH), a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA), has pioneered recycling projects in communities and tertiary institutions, created opportunities for women and youth in local communities through buying and selling of plastic bottles and established partnerships with NGOs, government entities and churches as the company seeks to heighten awareness of the importance of proper waste management.

Most recently, Voltic employees led a beach cleanup exercise at Laboma Beach to collect more than 20 bags of post-consumer waste for disposal by Beach Cleanup Ghana.

The organization uses smart technology solutions to clean and maintain beaches and waterbodies while creating employment opportunities in the circular economy.

Earlier this year, the ‘Say No to Single Use Plastic’ team joined Voltic and members of the University of Ghana Plastic Recycling Project to distribute free cloth shopping bags to households to discourage the use of black polythene bags.

And Voltic held plastic bottle buy-back events at Legon in the Greater Accra Region in January and February, supplying more than 200 households with recycling bags and creating awareness of proper ways to manage plastic waste.

The company held another buy-back event at Asokore – Mampong in the Ashanti Region and also donated recycling bins to the Joy2 The World International School, as well as educating staff and students on how to dispose of post-consumer waste properly through segregation.

Voltic’s Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability Manager, Worlasi Seddoh Bedu-Mensah said the company was committed to the Coca-Cola System’s World Without Waste initiative, which has set ambitious targets to help collect a bottle for every one it sells by 2030, make all its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025 and use 50% recycled content in its packaging in the same year. It will also aim to make 25% of its packaging reusable by 2030.

“Our commitment is to invest in our planet and our packaging to help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past,” said Mrs. Seddoh Bedu-Mensah.

“To encourage more people to recycle more often, we’re investing to help people understand what to recycle, how to recycle, and where to recycle. We also plan to work with local communities, NGOs, our competitors, and our critics to highlight this critical issue.”

Voltic has partnered with plastic waste aggregators to collect bottles from pickup points across Accra and facilitate the buying and selling of plastic bottles to establish a circular economy for plastic waste.

As part of its #IRecycle project in partnership with Total Energies and plastic waste recycling companies like Coliba, SESA and Beach Cleanup Ghana, Voltic is installing recycling bins at some Total filling stations and other strategic points across the capital.

This goes hand-in-hand with building awareness of proper post-consumer waste management habits like waste segregation, which improves the value that waste pickers get for the plastic they collect, while recyclers can buy cleaner waste bottles as raw materials.

“We are a proud industry leader in developing increasingly sustainable ways to manufacture, distribute and sell our products,” said Mrs. Seddoh Bedu-Mensah.

“As part of the CCBA group, we use our industry leadership to be part of the solution to achieve positive change in the world and to build a more sustainable future for our planet.”

About 300 young women students took part in the session, where they were able to find out more about questions they had for the team, ranging from financial aid to career progression in STEM beyond the scope of medical school.

Quality Assurance, Quality Controller at Voltic, Thelma Asiama, shared some of the challenges women face in pursuing a STEM career.

“It is not easy, but you have to persevere; I have built my career in this field, and so can you,” she said.

Eunice Nyarko, HR Business Partner at Voltic, talked about the wide range of opportunities in STEM fields. She said: “There are countless opportunities within this space; all you have to do is be determined.”

Expressing his appreciation to Voltic, the school’s Assistant Headmaster said, “We are grateful for this opportunity to share first-hand experiences with our female students. I believe this would guide them in making informed career choices”.

According to a recent article published by the World Bank, just 30 per cent of science professionals in Sub-Saharan Africa are women, and this needs to change for the continent to develop to its full potential.

“In an age of increasing digitalization, climate change concerns, and health crises such as the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, the critical importance of scientific and technological capacity is more evident than ever.

“Individuals with advanced science, technology, engineering, and mathematics skills are crucial to push us to new frontiers and tackle urgent challenges. However, the potential of one group has been consistently under-harnessed in this regard: women.”

Believing that women are critical to Africa’s shared success, the subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa has supported women’s career development in STEM fields.

Earlier this year, Voltic joined the non-profit organisation Girls in Science and Technology (GIST) to launch the GIST- University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa chapter.

The programme introduced GIST to students at the university and promoted their participation in STEM while sparking their interest in the endless career opportunities available to them.

The programme also provided mentorship and guidance to girls from elementary school through to various universities.

Meanwhile, schoolgirls in Takoradi got a taste of a future in science and technology when they participated in a robotics training session sponsored by Voltic last year.

The 64 girls between ages 15 and 19 enjoyed a hands-on lesson in robot building to inspire them to pursue further studies and a career in the male-dominated STEM fields.