South Africa and Egypt top regional sustainability rankings in 2023
At the request of Bahrain-based international logistics company Agility, Swiss group Horizon has produced a report on sustainability progress on the African continent. South Africa and Egypt are at the top of the list.
The year 2023 will have been fruitful for South Africa and Egypt in terms of progress on sustainable development. The two countries are ranked first in Africa in a sustainability report carried out by analysts from the Swiss agency Horizon. The evaluation criteria covered measures and investments from both the public and private sectors.
As for Egypt, it stood out in the six competing categories including sustainable transport, energy transition, environmental ecosystems, circular economy and “ecological technologies”. The initiative that worked in favor of the country of the pharaohs in this ranking is the memorandum of understanding signed by the Global Carbon Council (GCC), a carbon credit provider based in Qatar and the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) “ to promoting climate action around the world .
South Africa leads the Horizon report thanks to its “national biofuels industrial strategy” . The 647 business leaders from 17 countries who gave their opinions on sustainability in the rainbow nation noted first the recent billion- dollar partnership between the government of Pretoria and the World Bank. It will accelerate the energy transition in a context marked by power cuts. Added to this is the “formal code of governance” which encourages South African companies to take the environment into account in their daily activities.
The progress of other African countries, particularly in the East, is also mentioned in the report. Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya are, for example, noted as good students in the fight against pollution through their massive investments in electric mobility in 2023. However, the report mentions that climate change impacts the financial health of at least 49% of companies on the continent before concluding that “each country has its own sustainability priorities based on economic forces, energy dependence and other factors” .
