Safaricom 2023 Sustainable Business Report

54 OUR BUSINESS OUR STAKEHOLDERS KPI SUMMARY SAFARICOM SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS REPORT 2023 OUR MATERIAL TOPICS INCREASING OUR CDP SCORE We disclose our climate impacts through the CDP platform, making our response publicly available. This helps us hold ourselves accountable as we implement climate actions and benchmark with the best in the industry. In 2022, nearly 20 000 organizations disclosed their environmental information through CDP. We improved our climate change score in FY22 from C to B which was higher than the Africa regional average of B-, and the same as the media, telecommunications and data centre service sector average of B. We also improved our supplier engagement score from C to B. This is higher than the Africa regional average of C, and higher than the media, telecommunications & data centre services sector average of B-. COLLABORATING WITH KENYA FOREST SERVICE Our ambition is to plant five million trees by 2025. Once the trees have grown to maturity, this initiative will offset up to 26% of our carbon emissions, contributing to our aim of being a net- zero emitter by 2050. In FY23 we planted 237 000 indigenous trees in 215 hectares of degraded forest. To date, we have planted over 1.3 million trees in collaboration with Kenya Forest Service (KFS) since 2019, positively impacting over 6 000 community members through job creation. Between FY19 and FY21 we planted 215 000 trees – in Kieni Forest in Kiambu County – for which carbon reduction emission assessment was done in FY23, indicating we have offset 41.86 tCO 2 e. A key development was the signing, a few days after year end, of a collaboration framework with KFS. This is focused on growing five million trees in public forest reserves through an ‘adopt-a-forest’ strategy which will aid reforestation, protection, and conservation of over 5 000 hectares in public forests. This will also support efforts of achieving 30% national forest cover. Degraded forest areas in Lamu County have been identified for reforestation and conservation. The partnership was signed at Kinale Forest, where Safaricom PLC staff, Kenya Forest Services, the local Community Forest Association and invited guests planted 10 000 trees. An important milestone in FY23 was the development of our own tree nursery for 200 000 seedlings at a cost of KSh 2 million. Purchasing these seedlings from an established nursery for planting would have cost us KSh 4 million. Another important milestone was the development and deployment of a bespoke Tree Growing Information System which helps collect and monitor data on our tree growing initiative. NUMBER OF TREES PLANTED OVER THREE YEARS TO OFFSET CARBON (CUMULATIVE) FY20 FY21 FY22 FY23 Trees planted 144 000 650 000 1 022 000 1 300 000 QUANTIFYING OUR CARBON IMPACT We decided on using the operational control approach in establishing our organizational boundary. In selecting this approach, those operations with which we can influence through introduction and implementation of operating policies will be included in our organisational boundary. We are following the ISO 14064 guidelines to accurately measure and quantify emissions. The general procedure used to quantify GHG emissions involves taking the product of the activity data for each source and of the emission factor associated with the GHG emitting source. Scope 1 (direct) emissions are generated by the combustion of fossil fuels in company-owned vehicles and generators. Using the emission factors provided by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, emissions are quantified in the ways described in the table on the following page. “Our collaboration with Safaricom is among our plans for environmental conservation. In line with the government’s agenda, we aspire to plant about 15 billion trees in the next 10 years and more private sector partnerships and support from individual Kenyans will be crucial in achieving this goal.” Julius Kamau, immediate former Chief Conservator of Forests, Kenya Forest Service