Time to scale up responsible business practices – Dr. Owusu

The Presidential Advisor on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Dr. Eugene Owusu, has called on businesses to as a matter of urgency augment responsible business practices due to closeness of the timeline for SDGs.

According to him, businesses must begin to accelerate and scale up their investments in SDGs-inspired impact initiatives to boost the country’s prospects of achieving the goals by 2030.

“To achieve the world that we want, we need to rethink how our economies and businesses are structured. We need to make responsible business practices the core of our business models, and not just a ‘nice to have’.

"Responsible business also means being sustainable, and this makes responsible businesses so central to achieving the SDGs. We are at the mid-point of the SDGs timeframe, with barely 8 years to the 2030 end-date,” he stated.

Dr. Owusu was speaking at the maiden edition of the Responsible Business and Leadership Excellence Awards (RBLEA) 2021, which came off at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, and indicated that achieving the SDGs presents the country with a whole lot of opportunities for businesses to thrive – stating that it has the potential of not only generating peace and shared prosperity but business around it is remarkable, estimated at some US$12trillion in value.

The RBLEA, organised by ION Africa Business, is an empowerment-driven initiative that seeks to distinguish and uphold the achievements of inspiring corporate front-runners with responsible values.

It also aims at defining and celebrating vision, achievement and excellence in Ghana’s business leadership, and championing the implementation of sound business governance and systems while identifying and preventing practices that hinder social development.

Explaining further the benefits of achieving SDGs, Dr. Owusu stated that another significant thing about achieving them is the provision of common ground for both government and businesses to find solutions for the pressing development challenges the country is facing.

He continued by advising that businesses must operate differently, including fundamental changes in the ways by which essential goods and services such as energy, food, water, and housing are produced, distributed and consumed to achieve the gains.

He urged businesses to leverage new technologies to produce smartly and efficiently, while protecting the environment.

He commended the organiser of the awards, saying: “This is why I truly appreciate and passionately commend this awards ceremony and the Responsible Business and Leadership Excellence Awards Team behind this initiative”.