Impact Case Study: Ethical Apparel Africa
Ethical Apparel Africa participated in BCtA’s Impact Champions Programme to understand the impact of its business activities on the SDGs and collect evidence to inform its strategy and operations.
Ethical Apparel Africa (EAA) is a sourcing company, based in Ghana and Benin, that provides international apparel brands with ethical, cost-competitive and quality manufacturing solutions in West Africa. The company is working to support African factories to grow exports to the US, UK and Europe by ensuring their supply chain is transparent, reliable and accountable in the way they conduct their business.
To do this, EAA technical and compliance teams based on the ground provide hands-on, intensive training to workers and managers on an ongoing basis. This training specifically focuses on sourcing, product development, costing, production management, quality control. In addition, training on worker’s rights is key along with health and safety and international social compliance standards.
The company is also enabling access to market for factories through its network of international brands. This includes equipping factory management with the relevant information and skills, shaping their regulatory policies and environment to reflect sustainable business practices and helping them to develop a business model that creates profit that can be reinvested into workers.
In the long run, EAA’s impact goals are to:
create jobs at scale especially for women
develop and sustain decent and safe working conditions in their factories
empower workers and improve their quality of life and take-home pay
reduce carbon footprint through implementation of better ESG standards and
position West Africa as a new, ethical fully integrated garment industry hub
As a Business Call to Action (BCtA) member company, Ethical Apparel Africa participated in BCtA’s Impact Champions Programme via BCtA’s Impact Lab, to understand the impact of its business activities on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and collect evidence to inform its strategy and operations.
The Impact Lab provides an end-to-end impact management solution for inclusive businesses. It helps companies develop an SGD-focused impact framework for data collection, analysis and reporting, and is designed to help companies drive business value while delivering impact by understanding, proving, and improving their contributions to the SDGs. The Impact Champions Programme provides companies with training and hands-on support from BCtA.
As a result of their impact measurement and management undertaking, EAA came to several conclusions, detailed in this case study below.
Download the case study to read about the company’s IMM journey!
