The situation
British American Tobacco Nigeria, a subsidiary of the multinational company, had carried out community intervention initiatives over the years – some of which CSR-in-Action had supported – and wished to conduct an audit to outline gaps and achievements of its partner farmers, particularly around child labour.
What we did
We visited the communities over the course of two weeks and through insightful bespoke engagement, including questionnaires, face to face meetings with community leaders and randomly selected indigenous persons, a townhall meeting and guided open end interviews with community-focused company personnel, suppliers and local government representatives, we eked out the requisite pulse of the context.
We also retrained farmers on ILO and Nigeria regulations on child labour and why compliance is vital in their local language.
Outcome
We prepared a report which recommended best practice interventions, including setting up of MoU implementing committees, closer communications with communities through liaison staff and the use of local contractors when available, following certain less than satisfactory findings around project implementation, community relations guidelines and procedures and field personnel professionalism. We reiterated the negative effect that field staff inadequacies would have on long term positive relations within the communities.
Targets and plans were set for improved operations on the basis of our comprehensive report. By the next audit, farmer compliance was at 98%.
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