Egyptians could soon be buying petrol or happy meals based on the corporate social responsibility programmes of the companies they are buying from, says Nesmahar Sayed "If Vodafone is developing schools, Chipsy helping schools, Resala clothing the poor, Mobinil offering jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, Pepsi sponsoring sports, and Etisalat delivering clean water to homes, then what is the government doing?" During the first days of Ramadan, this question was being circulated on mobile phones, questioning the government's role now that more and more companies are moving into welfare projects. McDonald's is paying 25 piastres from the price of each Happy Meal sold to develop classes in Dar Al-Salam, a shanty area of Cairo. Etisalat is funding a project for clean water in Egypt's villages. Vodafone is targeting 2017 as the year when Egypt will be free of illiteracy. Chipsy is promoting a programme to stop children from leaving school due to difficult economic conditions. It may sound odd to many people that companies are spending funds on social welfare projects, which are supposed to be the state's responsibility. However, the companies believe that they have an important role to play. According to Nehad Shelbaya, public affairs manager at Exxon Mobil, "the importance of the citizen is the main motivation for all the corporate social responsibility [CSR] programmes the company funds." In addition to Egypt's main needs, which are primarily in healthcare and education, Shelbaya says that one of the key areas that Exxon Mobil is interested in is developing critical thinking among Egyptian students. Most of the programmes her company sponsors are related to education. Among such programmes, the charities Eshraq and Save the Children have teamed up to educate 1,000 girls in 20 villages, while Injaz is helping to improve students' creative skills by providing teachers for business and community projects in a programme jointly run by the company and the ministry of education. Because of the field experience of charities and NGOs, they are close to the people, which is why it is easier for companies to implement CSR programmes through NGOs. One example of this is the Egyptian Company for Mobile Services (Mobinil) partnering up with five NGOs in order to help create 100,000 jobs. Mobinil's role will be to provide funding and publicity for the initiative in order to maximise the exposure and impact of the programme. Dar Al-Orman, the Ebtessama Foundation, the Association for Women's Advancement & Development (AWTAD), Injaz-Egypt and the Development Association for Empowering Special Needs (DAESN) will train candidates, execute projects and provide progress reports. The importance of such an initiative comes at a time when unemployment in Egypt has reached 11.9 per cent of the workforce in the first quarter of 2011. According to Hassan Kabbani, Mobinil's CEO in Egypt, job creation is the key to Egypt's development. According to Shelbaya, top priorities are health and education, and women are significantly represented on the company's agenda. "Last year, Exxon Mobil funded the first international workshop for women in administration," Shelbaya notes, adding that improving the life-chances of Egypt's women is one of the main aims of the Exxon Mobile programme. Ghada Makady, a manager for public affairs and communication at Coca-Cola Middle East and North Africa, says that her company is promoting economic development at the village level by addressing the "three pillars" of the community, the family and the individual. On the community level, Coca-Cola is cooperating with the Egypt Food Bank in order to help refurbish infrastructure and connect families with sources of clean water. For the family pillar, it is partnering with micro-finance institutions in order to provide micro-loans to families that will enable them to invest and build small business to provide sustainable family income. For the individual pillar, Coca-Cola is working with other partners to provide scholarships to students, support university students in entrepreneurship, and develop learning centres in 100 schools with the Discovery Channel. According to observers, the companies' involvement in such projects could help silence claims that their products are injurious to health, especially Coca-Cola's fizzy drinks. Makady comments that "Coca-Cola believes that community investment is necessary throughout the year. Investing in community sustainability is a key part of how we operate as a local business, and is a critical part of our strategy in Egypt. This clarifies that Coca-Cola's CSR activities are not a 'response' to anything. Instead, they are an investment in community sustainability." In recent years there have been reports that the misuse of mobile phones could negatively affect health, and Nabil Makram, an environmental awareness expert at Mobinil, says that the target of the company's health and environmental awareness department is to raise awareness among Mobinil customers, employees and the public generally. As the companies move on with such projects, not everyone is thrilled to see their role expanding. "If companies take over responsibility for vital services like clean drinking water and education, then what is the government's role," Nadin Shams, a screenwriter, asked. "The state appears to be begging companies to help feed and educate poorer members of society, and with all due respect to the role CSR can play in developing society and communities, this should not be their role," Shams said. However, Mahmoud Abdel-Fadil, a professor of economics at Cairo University, believes that CSR projects can play a complementary role to that of the state. "Egypt is a country with limited resources, and it has experienced high rates of population growth. What is wrong if these companies share a role with government in achieving public goals," Abdel-Fadil asked. In developed countries, companies have significant CSR programmes, he said, and governments are happy to encourage these by offering tax breaks and other incentives. Such things should happen in Egypt as well, Abdel-Fadil said. "With cooperation between NGOs, companies and government, things can only get better." Another fine line is how to differentiate between CSR programmes and advertisements for the companies. However, as Khaled El-Balshi, editor of the leftist daily Al-Badil says, "there is a big difference between publishing the contents of a press release sent out by a company and covering an event or project organised by a company." For El-Balshi, publishing the names of companies helping to develop the community is acceptable as long as there is a clear demarcation between editorial material and advertising. Projects carried out only to benefit the company should not be publicised, he said. Things that look like political interference should also not be considered to be CSR activities. "It is the reader's right to know who is doing what and who is benefiting society and who is harming it," he concluded. For Shelbaya, the best publicity for any company is the success of its CSR projects. "When a project is implemented successfully and people reap its benefits, this is the most effective form of publicity for any company," she said.
