Kenya’s Equity Bank has been named as the most Socially Responsible Bank in Africa at the continent’s most prestigious banking and financial sector event.
The African Banker Awards 2019, affirms Equity’s social and environmental leadership on the continent.
The award recognises Equity’s initiatives steered through the Equity Group Foundation (EGF) programs that are positively impacting communities.
The programs are across five thematic areas that include education and leadership development, entrepreneurship and financial education, health, agriculture and agribusiness, and energy and environment.
The efforts they are geared towards, go beyond the philanthropic use of funds to use of overall knowledge, resources and reputation to improve livelihoods.
Through EGF, the bank has had successful initiatives, key among them being the improvement of secondary school education access for 16,168 students under the Wings to Fly program; Financial Literacy training that has benefited over 1.7 million citizens; more than 400,000 households have benefitted from 84,708 clean energy products, and 638,522 peasant farmers have been transformed to agribusiness entrepreneurs.
In the Socially Responsible Bank category, Equity had been shortlisted alongside Access Bank (Nigeria), Bank Misr (Egypt), KCB (Kenya) and Qalaa Holdings (Egypt).
“We’ve been following the work of the financial services industry for many years. The sector over the years has seen great returns, and 2018 was another strong year for banks,’ said Omar Ben Yedder, publisher of the African Banker.
The winners of the awards, hosted by African Banker magazine in conjunction with Business in Africa Events, were announced at the African Banker Awards in Malabo Equatorial Guinea.
In 2018, Equity Group CEO Dr. James Mwangi won Banker of the Year Award for visionary leadership.
The Bank beat off strong competition from four other shortlisted nominees to win the coveted African Bank of the Year Award for registering top performance across all banking metrics.
JK/as/APA