Sustainability

This upliftment drives our growth as a business, ensures profitable returns to our shareholders and continued growth and development of the communities we operate in as well as contributing positively to environmental conservation. We frame this concept as shared value.

We conduct our activities through the lens of our strategy. We assist customers to create, grow and protect wealth by offering an integrated set of banking and insurance products and services delivered through our customer facing businesses.

Absa aspires to be a truly purpose-led organisation. This means making a proud and positive contribution to the world around us and putting our purpose at the heart of everything that we do.

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together . . . one story at a time.

We have deployed Kes 60 billion across sustainable investment, financing, and our operation activities to help accelerate climate transition and advance inclusive growth. We aim to double this by 2025.

In 2023, we were crowned the best Bank in Sustainable Finance in Kenya by Kenya Bankers Association Sustainable Finance Catalyst Awards.

Renewable and clean energy

Renewable energy investments is gaining momentum in Kenya, and we are committed to financing businesses as part of our clean strategy transition by 2025. We believe in partnerships and currently involving experts in mapping out our capital financing portfolio towards renewable and clean energy products.

We are allocating at least 10% of our capital to climate finance to promote green energy, green building as well as sustainable agribusiness.
Industries, innovation and infastructure

Kenya aims to become an industrial hub for Africa by 2030. We are supporting this vision by financing both private and government infrastructure projects to realise the vision.

In realizing this UN SDG goal 9, we commit to build a resilient infrastructure for Kenya, promoting inclusive growth and foster innovation among youth, women and PWDs business startups. We have run programmes like ‘Wazo challenge’ which is geared towards youth business mentorships and currently 10 youth startups have gone through the programme.
Financially excluded groups

We are committed to bank the underbanked and we have revamped our Timiza offering to make it easier for small savings and loan advancements to customers. More than KES70 billion has been accessed since inception.

Together with our partners, we provided an investor readiness program that will see startups in the social impact space access up to KES3 million in unsecured lending. The program targets to reach 1,000 women-focused startups and will provide value add services such as financial training, investment-readiness capacity building, structured mentorship, structured networking, and access to finance.

We also launched SheTradesKE Programme in 2020 which is KES10 billion fund to advance credit to women-owned small and medium enterprises over the next five years..

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Sustainable cities and communities

We are committed to financing the green economy and working in partnerships to finance green mortgages.

We are executing our PWD roadmap which encompasses both physical and digital accessibility and financial inclusion to differently abled individuals for them to sustain their livelihoods.
Responsible consumption and production

We support the circular economy through minimisation of waste streams from our business’s operations. A significant contribution to this initiative is the recycling of e-waste, furniture, billboards, plastic, and steel waste.

We are committed to financing the green economy and working in partnerships to finance green mortgages.

We are executing our PWD roadmap which encompasses both physical and digital accessibility and financial inclusion to differently abled individuals for them to sustain their livelihoods.
Value chains

Ecosystem Banking allows for an integrated approach to providing services across our client’s ecosystems. Corporate clients who have signed onto the platform enable their vendors to access financial services based on their relationship with these corporates.

This initiative unlocks lending to SMEs in corporate value chains by using non-traditional bank lending solutions, provides finance and further builds capacity through our Business Development Support (BDS) Framework.

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We ensure our business helps protect the environment through curbing climate change and reducing our environmental footprint.

Net zero carbon commitment

We continue to work to not only reduce our carbon footprint as a business, but also develop innovative climate finance products to support our clients on their transition journey.

We have completed mapping of our carbon Emissions and through our energy efficiency initiatives and retrofits, we have managed to reduce our carbon emissions by 6,000 metric tonnes of carbon.

We are planting Mangroves in Coastal Kenya at two sites; Bidii Creek in Jomvu Kuu Area, Mombasa and Majoreni Beach Management Unit in Kwale. We are engaging more partners to realize our target of planting 1 million.
Enhancing our forest cover

We are committed to support the Kenyan Government initiative of increasing forest cover. We commit to plant 10 million trees.

We have currently planted approximately 1 million trees across the country with various partners. We will be increasing these targets annually the coming years to realise our target.

This initiative is in line with the bank’s renewed sustainability agenda. The tree planting projects are undertaken in partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in support of the 15 billion trees by 2032 national agenda.
Green building certification

In September 2020, we became the first bank in Kenya to join the Kenya Green Building Society as a champion for initiatives that promote the green economy by reducing pollution and improving people’s lives while fostering economic growth. We invested approximately KES34 million in retrofitting all our facilities to become water and energy efficient with an aim to bring down energy costs by up to 30%, which is approximately KES20 million annually. Our 5 buildings have received IFC EDGE certification in 2022. This include WestEnd Headquarters, Bishopgate Head Offices, Queensway branch, Nkrumah Road, Mombasa branch, and Kisii branch. We plan to roll out this to all our Absa buildings.
Reducing negative impact

One of the key resources consumed in all buildings is water. We chose to replace existing water dispensers with water purification units which are eco-friendly. These units eliminate the storage and removal of plastic bottles from our workspace. The elimination of the collection and delivery of large plastic water bottles furthermore reduces our business’ carbon footprint.
Partnerships

Sustainable banking practices have always been part of our culture, and we invest in strategic partnerships with global organisations to stay abreast of international best practices.

We are also aligned with key international bodies, such as Sustainable Finance Initiative, UN Global Compact, and Women’s Empowerment Principles.

We recognise the challenges facing ordinary Kenyans, and we seek to be responsive to our social context, aiming to address and influence the root causes of the social challenges we face in society, being a “force for good”.

Our ccontributions to society and the economy can be defined by our social investment into youth, women, and communities, through our internal improvement initiatives introduced into our operations, support of our suppliers and by our contribution made to the country's tax base. In 2023, we committed KES100 billion to support MSMEs across various value chains over the next 3 years.

Sustainable supply chain

We are committed to increasing the supply chain awareness of corporate sustainability and responsible business practices. In 2020, we launched a supplier training programme on sustainability in partnership with Strathmore Business School. To date, we have trained over 400 suppliers on sustainability and one networking event for them at Strathmore University Business School. Please view video testimonials below. In addition, we have partnered with IFC through its programme Sourcing to Equal and trained over 500 WSMEs on Absa procurement readiness.

Our supplier diversity is 12% in 2023 up from 6% in 2021 in line with our target of achieving 30% by 2025 to include women, youth and PWDs.
Investing in youth

We believe the youth will mould our business for the future and listening to them inspires us. One of our top priorities is to put the basic building blocks in place to ensure that young Kenyans can reimagine their futures and bring their possibility to life.

In 2021, we signed a partnership with The Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) to empower one million Kenyans with digital opportunities through – Ajira Digital and Ready-to-Work. This is aimed to equip the Kenyan youth with skills, work opportunities and also to provide the industry with a pool of skilled workers to drive the growth and competitiveness of our economy.
Our employees

Our people are our strength. We ensure the continued development of our staff, and we aim to embed a culture underpinned by the Absa Kenya way of easier, faster, better to become among the top 10 best places to work.

As importantly, we promote equality in the workplace through policies targeted at gender and marginalised groups, which ensures an economically viable business. Approximately 250,000 youths have been trained so far on Ready to Work Skills. This training encompasses work skills, money skills, people skills and Entrepreneurship.

In 2021, we signed a partnership with The Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) to empower one million Kenyans with digital opportunities through – Ajira Digital and Ready-to-Work. This is aimed to equip the Kenyan youth with skills, work opportunities and to provide the industry with a pool of skilled workers to drive the growth and competitiveness of our economy.
Our contribution

With our pledge to implement the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking, we affirm and express our willingness to continue an active role to encourage sustainable practices and enable economic activities that contribute to a circular economy, green economy and blue economy.

Our business focuses on creating ongoing value amongst our customer base. This is fostered through the implementation of responsible lending practices, and the innovation of products to service specific customer needs.

We also focus on the management of our own business processes responsibly. This allows us to live our goals, in so doing demonstrating to our staff why aspects like environmental, social and governance protocols imposed are good for business and society.

We continue to hone our skills, innovate, and empower marginalised groups within our business, extending these principles into the greater supply chain and customer base.

ESG in our policies

ESG considerations form an integral part of our customer onboarding process. Our ESG Policy is aligned to the IFC Performance Standards, Equator Principles, UNGC, KBA SFI, United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking, Central Bank of Kenya Guidelines on Climate Related Risk management as well as Nairobi Securities Exchange guidelines on ESG disclosures.

We also have a robust Environment and Social management system and standards that govern our lending process.
Our sustainability commitments

We are committed to contribute towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), cementing our commitment to continuing to positively impact on society in the right way.

Our four high impact goals, namely SDGs 4 (quality education), 8 (decent work and economic growth), 10 (reducing inequality) and 12 (responsible consumption and production) remain our primary focus. These goals are underpinned by our contribution to SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) and 17 (partnerships for the goals) respectively.

We plan to include four additional SDGs as part of our future focus. These include the identified medium impact goals set under SDGs 7 (affordable and clean energy), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 11 (Sustainable Cities and communities), and 15 (life on Land).

See our sustainability commitments
Corporate governance

Our financial strength, coupled with extensive local and international resources, have positioned us as the top provider of financial services in the market for over a century. Moreover, our consistent financial performance has built confidence in our leadership and management among our bank’s shareholders, as well as the industry overall.

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Sustainability reports

Read our latest sustainability reports here:

Sustainability report 2023

Sustainability report 2022

Climate-related financial disclosures 2022

Integrated report 2022

Integrated report 2021