Sustainability in Troubled Times

project management techniques as EY
member firms employ with mainstream
government and large commercial
clients.
By using those techniques, EY people
have helped tackle a wide variety of
issues – from designing the business
models and operating structures needed
to set up new enterprises, to helping
more established enterprises put in
place the systems and processes they
need to better manage their people
finances, customers, and data as they
scale.
Accelerating progress toward the
Sustainable Development Goals
To date, EY teams have provided
approximately 60,000 hours of consulting
support to nearly 60 clients in
more than 25 different countries across
sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and
Central and Latin America. The
following are just a tiny sample of the
legacy builders EY has supported
recently, illustrating how their growth
will contribute to the achievement of
the SDGs:
• Improving access to export markets for smallholder
farmers in Sudan
Africorp provides a route to global
markets for more than 4,000 smallholder
farmers in some of the world’s
poorest and most marginalized
communities. Working capital and
processing constraints mean the
company is unable to meet the demand
for its products, which include sesame,
hibiscus, and Arabica gum. EY was
engaged by a consortium of impact
investors to develop the robust business
plan needed to attract growth capital.
• Extending access to safe drinking water in
East Africa
With an ingenious business model that
uses advanced solar-powered equipment
to purify locally sourced water
and make it available for a fraction of
the price of other bottled waters, Jibu
aims to bring clean, safe drinking water
to a million people by 2020. EY helped
them establish the robust financial and
operational controls needed to support
rapid expansion.
• Advancing container-based sanitation (CBS) as
a viable answer to the global sanitation crisis
With one in three people on Earth still
without healthy, dignified sanitation,
the world cannot wait for sewers. EY
worked with Water & Sanitation for
the Urban Poor and its Clean Team
business in Ghana to identify means
by which Clean Team could achieve
profitability and position itself to scale,
including assessing the viability of its
CBS model in other markets.
• Reducing use of dangerous, polluting kerosene
in rural India
Frontier Markets is tackling the
problem of access to clean energy by
building a last-mile distribution and
maintenance network for reliable, affordable
solar products. EY worked
with Acumen’s Lean Data Services
team to help them build scalable, costeffective
means to continually gather
customer feedback and use that insight
to strengthen every aspect of their
strategy and operations.
• Providing employment and sustainable
development in Bolivia
Chalalan is a community-owned ecotourism
company located in the heart
of the Madidi National Park on the
Bolivian Amazon. It is the main source
of employment for the 630 inhabitants,
and any profits are redistributed to
this community. EY helped Chalalan
develop the business infrastructure
and credible growth plan it needed to
attract impact investors.
» EY teams treat each
project with an Acumen
business with the same
level of professionalism
as any major corporate
EY engagement,
consistently delivering
high-quality work. «
Justus Kilian,
Post Investment Manager, Acumen
» EY filled a skillset and
experience gap that
was crippling our
ability to scale. For the
first time, we’re able to
make management and
business model decisions
that we were
previously making
blindly. «
Galen Welsch,
Co-founder and Africa CEO, Jibu
» It’s been an
inspiration and
a privilege to work
with such a genuinely
purpose-driven
business – one that’s
literally changing
people’s lives. «
Elisabeth Wallis, Senior Manager,
People Advisory Services,
Ernst & Young Incorporated
Global Compact International Yearbook 2017 113