ESG Spotlight: Community Development Initiatives
By Ago Abel
When people talk about ESG—Environmental, Social, and Governance—it often sounds a bit abstract. A checklist. A set of boxes to tick so a company looks good in reports. But for us at LELEADER GROUP, based in Benin, ESG is something more grounded. More immediate. Something we live, not just announce.
We didn’t set out to “do ESG.” It didn’t start with a strategy paper. It started with questions from the ground.
Why are so many girls missing school during their period?
Why are basic school supplies still out of reach for some communities?
Why are small clinics struggling to get cleaning products on time?
Each time we came across a gap like this, we didn’t wait for a donor. We asked ourselves: What can we do, realistically, with what we have?
That approach has shaped our community development efforts over the years.
One of the initiatives I’m most proud of is our reusable menstrual pad program, developed in partnership with local NGOs and health educators. It sounds simple—just a hygiene solution. But the ripple effects have been powerful. Girls who used to miss school several days each month now attend regularly. Some of them have started clubs to educate their peers about reproductive health. Others have become peer trainers.
That’s not charity. That’s dignity in action.
In another area, we looked at the issue of lighting and mobility for students in rural areas. Too many children were walking to school in the early hours, often in poor visibility, and then returning home after dark. Our solution? Solar-powered school bags. They store light during the day, and turn into mini lanterns at night. Again, not high-tech. But effective.
These are the kinds of interventions we believe make a lasting difference. Not massive projects. But practical, scalable ones—ones that treat communities not as recipients, but as collaborators.
And sometimes, the best thing we can offer isn’t a product—it’s logistics.
We’ve used our shipping arm to deliver donated school materials to hard-to-reach villages. Or to move medical supplies during crises when other transport options failed. We don’t always announce it. We just do it. Because if our trucks are running and there’s space, why not use it for good?
Of course, this doesn’t mean we get everything right. We’ve made mistakes. We’ve launched programs that didn’t take off, or that didn’t scale the way we hoped. Sometimes a community’s needs change faster than we can adapt. And sometimes, to be honest, we didn’t ask the right people for input soon enough.
But the intention has always been to learn and improve.
That’s where the “G” in ESG—governance—comes in. It’s not just about compliance. It’s about accountability. It’s about asking: Who’s at the table when we make decisions? Are we building processes that include more voices—not fewer?
That principle now guides how we engage with our regional teams, especially in our expansion markets like Namibia and the DRC. We try, wherever possible, to hire locally, to promote from within, and to keep listening, even after a project launches. ESG, in our experience, works best when it’s embedded—not outsourced.
This year, as LELEADER GROUP prepares to attend the 2025 Go Global Awards in London—hosted by the International Trade Council—we’ll be sharing these experiences with peers from around the world. We’re proud to be nominees. But more than that, we’re proud to represent the idea that responsible business doesn’t have to be complicated.
The Go Global Awards are more than an event. They’re a gathering of thinkers and builders. People asking, not just “how do we grow?”, but “what kind of growth matters?”
For us, that question circles back to community.
Because if our growth doesn’t lift others along the way, what’s the point?
So yes, we’ll keep tracking our emissions. Yes, we’ll improve transparency in our operations. But we’ll also keep asking those smaller, harder-to-measure questions: Who’s benefitting? Who’s still left out? And what can we, today, with the tools we already have—do to fix it?
That’s what ESG means to us.
And we hope more companies in West Africa and beyond will join us in reshaping how it's done—not for the spotlight, but for the communities that never asked to be left behind in the first place.