Education
Sustainability must move from CSR to core business strategy, Seplat Energy executive says – EnviroNews
– Advertisement –
Businesses must move beyond treating sustainability as a standalone corporate social responsibility function and integrate it into strategy, operations and decision-making to strengthen resilience, manage risks and create measurable business value, a senior Seplat Energy executive has said.
Director of External Affairs and Social Performance at Seplat Energy Plc, Chioma Afe, made the call at the 2026 Sustainability Conference of the Sustainability Professionals Institute of Nigeria (SPIN) in Lagos, where industry experts and sustainability practitioners examined the skills required to navigate growing volatility and build future-ready organisations.
Speaking during a panel session themed “The Future-Ready Sustainability Professional: Skills for Navigating Volatile Times,” Afe said sustainability professionals have a critical role to play in repositioning sustainability from a perceived cost centre or collection of social initiatives to a strategic function directly linked to organisational performance.
“Sustainability should not be viewed as a cost centre. It’s a risk management tool,” she said.
Sustainability as a business imperative
Afe pointed to Seplat Energy’s strategic evolution as an example of how organisations can embed sustainability into their core business model.
She explained that during the company’s strategy review in 2020–2021, sustainability was repositioned as a core component of the business capable of generating returns, rather than remaining largely focused on community interventions.
For such integration to succeed, she said, sustainability must be understood across the organisation, with departments such as operations, legal, procurement, finance and human resources recognising their respective roles in identifying sustainability-related risks and contributing to broader corporate objectives.
Afe urged practitioners to strengthen their commercial understanding and demonstrate how sustainability can solve concrete business problems.
Rather than concentrating primarily on implementing initiatives and producing reports, she said, professionals should be able to explain the business case for an intervention, identify the risks it addresses and demonstrate the value it creates.
Move beyond “random acts of kindness”
Afe also challenged businesses to rethink how they define and pursue social impact.
“We should stop funding random acts of kindness,” she said, arguing that organisations should first establish the specific business or societal challenge they are trying to solve before committing resources.
According to her, many of the challenges confronting businesses are connected to broader social, economic and environmental systems. Effective solutions therefore require collaboration among businesses, communities, government and other stakeholders rather than isolated corporate interventions.
She recommended the use of materiality assessments and stakeholder mapping to help organisations determine where their resources can deliver the greatest value.
Such tools, she said, can help companies distinguish between initiatives undertaken simply because they are convenient and interventions that respond to clearly identified and material needs.
“Measure what matters”
Afe further stressed the importance of data and evidence in determining whether sustainability programmes are producing meaningful results.
“Measure what matters,” she said, urging professionals to concentrate on indicators that demonstrate genuine progress instead of attempting to measure everything.
She said practitioners should establish a clear chain connecting the problem identified, the intervention deployed and the outcome achieved.
Where an initiative cannot demonstrate meaningful impact, she argued, sustainability professionals should be prepared to question whether it is delivering genuine value.
New skills needed for sustainability professionals
Beyond technical knowledge of sustainability, Afe identified commercial awareness, organisational understanding, data literacy, governance knowledge, stakeholder engagement and relationship-building as increasingly important competencies.
She also encouraged professionals to understand Nigeria’s regulatory environment while keeping pace with global sustainability developments.
Continuous stakeholder mapping, identification of emerging risks and recognition of governance gaps, she said, would help sustainability practitioners become more effective advisers to senior management.
Understanding the business is key to boardroom influence
Afe also addressed the career progression of sustainability professionals into executive and board-level positions, stressing that practitioners must understand the organisation beyond their immediate areas of responsibility.
“For you to be on the board, you must understand the business in totality,” she said.
Professionals who remain confined to their functional roles, she noted, may struggle to demonstrate how sustainability contributes to overall organisational performance.
She therefore encouraged practitioners to build relationships across departments and understand how decisions in different parts of an organisation influence one another.
Cross-functional collaboration, she said, is essential for professionals seeking to expand their influence and demonstrate their readiness for senior leadership.
Continuous learning and visibility critical to career growth
Afe further urged sustainability practitioners to take deliberate responsibility for their professional development by pursuing continuous learning, participating in professional networks and creating opportunities for mentorship, sponsorship and leadership visibility.
“You must develop, you must learn, you must continue to collaborate,” she said, encouraging professionals to seize opportunities to make their expertise and contributions visible.
Her message reflects the increasingly strategic role of sustainability within organisations facing interconnected environmental, social, regulatory and business risks.
For Seplat Energy, the approach underscores the company’s stated commitment to embedding sustainability within its strategy and operations, while its participation in the SPIN conference reflects the importance of strengthening professional capacity and advancing the sustainability discourse in Nigeria.
As businesses confront greater volatility and increasingly complex stakeholder expectations, Afe’s intervention points to a changing role for sustainability professionals: from programme managers and compliance specialists to strategic business partners capable of understanding commercial priorities, managing risk, interpreting data, influencing decision-makers and delivering measurable impact across the wider ecosystem.