Washington, DC — The Shell group of companies has pledged $18.5 million for health and development projects in Nigeria. The money will be invested through two "social partnerships" - an anti-malaria program with Africare, a private, charitable organisation based in Washington, DC, and a three-pronged food security and anti-malaria effort with the United States Agency for International Development.
The aid agency will contribute $5 million through its Global Development Alliance, which facilitates public/private partnerships. Africare will provide $1.1 million for the anti-malaria effort.
The announcement was made by Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts during a breakfast sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Shell is investing $2 billion annually in Africa, a large proportion of which is in Nigeria, where its production has recently risen to one million barrels per day - a landmark the company says it expects to sustain.
The three initiatives for the Shell/USAID effort aim to revive production of a Nigerian staple food by introducing mosaic-resistant cassava; to reduce malaria, which kills an estimated 300,000 Nigerians a year; and to build shrimp exports to create jobs and income for rural communities. Watts said the initiatives, for which Shell is providing $15 million, aim to intervene at the level of basic human need. He said, for example, that thirty million people in Nigeria grow or distribute cassava.
"Investing in people is perhaps the single most important factor in achieving long-term economic growth," said Andrew S. Natsios, USAID administrator. He said his agency is providing about $65 million annually in Nigeria for development assistance that supports democracy and governance, agriculture, education, health and HIV/Aids.
Julius Coles, the Africare president, called malaria one of Africa's most serious health problems, "in some cases a more important killer than HIV/Aids." The three-year malaria control campaign, to which Shell is giving $3.4 million alongside Africare's contribution, will focus on selected communities in six Nigerian states in the oil-producing Niger Delta region along the country's Atlantic coast. The rivers and mangrove forests of the area, home to an estimated 10 million people, provide a fertile breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite, he said.
"Prevention methods will be stressed and will include increased availability of insecticide mosquito nets, early recognition of danger signs followed by rapid treatment, and improved access to effective and affordable anti-malaria drugs," Coles said.
Watts said that his corporate group, which has been strongly challenged in Nigeria as well as South Africa by human rights and environmental activists, has added two new commitments to its business principles since the mid-1990s - "to contribute to sustainable development and to support fundamental human rights." He said Shell is spending $60 million annually in the Niger Delta on social programs and that Shell's managers have "learned to start with a conversation that asks: 'What do you need in this area and how can we help'?"
What is most important, he said, is "not whether you make mistakes but whether you acknowledge it, whether you learn from it, whether you do something about it and change and improve the way you do business." In addition, he said, "we learned that having a third party is useful" as a neutral broker between the company and the community.
"Africa is truly a test case," Watts said, of whether international business can be a "creator of wealth and promoter of progress." Africa-wide, Shell operates in 38 countries, employees 10,000 people, and has $6 billion in assets. Supporting education and training is particularly critical, Watts said, on a continent where once-robust institutions of higher learning can no longer equip libraries and scientific laboratories. Empowering women through training, micro-credit and infrastructure that can help them develop businesses is also seen as a central goal.
In response to the problem of HIV/Aids, Watts said companies in the Shell group have become pro-active in responding to "this catastrophic situation we have on our hands". The company is working with UNAIDS to develop predictive "global Aids scenarios" as a powerful communication tool for increasing awareness among policy makers and the public generally, he said.
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Watts, who also chairs the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said supporting sustainable African development is both "a moral imperative for business" and a strategic necessity. Citing Shell's initiatives to develop alternative sources of energy, he said petroleum and related products will remain essential to Africa's quest for prosperity. "I'm not a bit embarrassed about leading a fossil fuel company," he said. For the near future, energy will come largely from fossil fuels, and "without energy, there is no development."
Watts, whose formal title is chairman of the Committee of Managing Directors of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, has been involved in Africa personally since arriving in Sierra Leone as a teacher more than three decades ago. When he became head of the Shell group, he took the unusual step of making sub-Saharan Africa part of his office's responsibility. "The head doesn't usually have a regional portfolio to look after," Watts acknowledged, but he said that the decision signals both a corporate and an individual priority.
