The Africa Strategy for 2024-2025 evolves our 2021-2023 Africa Strategy by aligning global and regional approaches, given the interconnected nature of international and African-specific goals and addresses outstanding priorities from the previous strategy. This strategy takes into account the priorities that are top of mind for African businesses, such as the cost of capital, energy and ease of doing business. Two objectives and three key pillars support this ambition: the two objectives are growing impact through action and driving inclusive impact, supported by the pillars of value proposition, growth and operating model.

Companies have chosen to look at their policies and existing programmes to understand how they can better support women in the workplace, marketplace and community. More than 9,000 CEOs have signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a set of seven Principles guiding business to advance gender equality. Building on these Principles, the WEPs Gender Gap Analysis Tool is an online self-assessment that allows companies to anonymously assess their gender equality performance. This report presents the aggregated findings of the self-assessment tool for 2,777 companies across 117 countries for selected indicators from 2 December 2021 to 1 December 2023. The results cover companies of varying sizes, with more than half being large enterprises and 45 per cent being small- and medium-sized enterprises. The companies come from a broad range of industries from healthcare to financial services.

The United Nations Global Compact–Accenture CEO Sustainability Study offers a candid look at perspectives of more than 1,230 CEOs across 113 countries and 21 industries at the urgent opportunities and challenges for leaders to address the climate crisis. The full report will be released here on 1 November 2021.

This publication establishes the initial set of SDG Ambition benchmarks that challenge organizations to set more ambitious goals and targets in the areas in which business is positioned to have a substantial impact. Business leaders can use this document to support their strategy and set goals ambitious enough to deliver the SDGs by 2030.